Mist and Ice
by saveusmilkboy
Summary: This is a retelling of Norse mythology, examining a period of about a year before Loki's binding. All the episodes are taken from traditional Scandinavian and Icelandic sources and expanded upon to suit my own dark purpose.
1. Chapter 1

**Of How Thor Became the Bride of Thrym, part 1**

Loki placed one hip against the heavy oak door frame and settled in to enjoy the spectacle. Thor was frowning in the middle of the room, bathed in morning sun and surrounded by a scuffle of servants who ran around the room carrying trays, trailing mysterious fabrics and generally being useless. Loki caught a passing bowl of dried and sugared fruit, and nibbled happily on a raisin. Frey stood balanced on a stool so that he would be able to reach the top of Thor's head, attempting to fasten different veils and decorations into the red, tangled mess that Thor called hair. In the meanwhile, Thor was scowling at the world and threatening to burst out of the dress he was wearing. Oh, yes. Asgard was home to many an athletic and tall woman with chiselled shoulders and not much in the way of hips. Still, to find a dress that would fit Thor's breadth and height proved to be impossible. The dark grey rag he was wearing was pilfered from the closet of some unpleasant matron who, while perhaps as wide-chested as Thor, was about three heads shorter, making the dress hang sadly around the man's knees while its waistline wobbled high up, practically underneath his armpits.

Frey managed to fasten a veil around Thor's head and let its delicate shroud fall experimentally over the man's face. A good decision, since it finally obscured Thor's displeased expression. Even so it had the combined effect of pissing on a forest fire. Doubtful but willing to give it a chance, Frey stepped back to look at his creation. Loki could no longer keep silent.

"It may do it for you, Frey, but I would need some powerful persuasion to fuck that. At least shave that stubble if you won't let me change him," he said approaching the scene. Frey tried to look as if he disagreed but failed miserably. His forehead crumbled into a complicated expression.

"You are not shaving me!" Thor put in loudly, ripping the veil from his head and with it all of Frey's good work.

"He's right, Thor," Frey sighed looking at the flimsy piece of cloth with a mixture of exasperation and amusement.

"Not shaving-," Thor continued, but Frey put up his hand to cut him off.

"You'll never look like a woman, mate, but we must at least make an effort."

Thor paused and looked from one man to the other, obviously wrestling with two choices which were equally unpalatable to him. He waved his fingers and the scuttling servants left the room in single file.

"Fine," he said at long last. "Change me."

Loki looked on innocently. He knew what it cost Thor to ask for magic and dearly wanted to hear his friend ask for it again. "Pardon?"

"Change me, Loki, but no fucking around," he grumbled, folding his hands in front of his chest to accentuate how serious he was. His muscled forearms, however, only achieved a comic effect in combination with the long bell sleeves and numerous bracelets Frey had fastened onto them.

"Optional extra arsehole?" Loki suggested, but before Thor's growl could become more vocal, or more physical, Frey, now nibbling on that same bowl of fruit Loki had abandoned, commented, "Have a care, Skywalker. He's enough of an arse with the one hole he has."

"You as well?" Thor said with a pleading look at Frey who was now unabashedly grinning. Defeated, the Thunder Master sighed, "Nothing weird, Trickster. And nothing permanent."

"It won't be," Loki shrugged.

Apparently his innocent shrug was anything but for Thor felt he had to emphasize his point. "Loki, I will strangle you with your own entrails."

"And spend eternity as a woman," Loki mumbled but relented quickly. He knew perfectly well that Thor lost his otherwise excellent sense of humour once the joke was put so squarely on him at which point he tended to become incredibly boorish. "Fine, fine, I will make it so that the spell breaks once you have Mjölnir in your hands, or I release you. Will that do?"

"Swear it," Frey suggested, seemingly offhandedly but his eyes glinted with careful cunning.

Loki threw him a dirty look. "Honestly, I don't have to-," he started to protest but saw Frey's wish reflected in Thor's ever clouding face.

"Oh! Alright," he gave in and put his right hand over his chest, his left one resting on the hilt of his dagger ceremonially. "I, Loki of Aesir and Jötnar, son of Laufey, swear on my children that I will not make any changes to this, Thor, son of Odin, master of the stormy skies, which cannot be later recalled. No matter how much they might be considered improvements," he announced with all the required pomp. Frey snickered, Thor grumbled and Loki was finally allowed to get to work.

"Ready for it?" he asked only to get another wordless grunt from Thor as a response but he could no longer pay attention to Thor in his ridiculous outfit, or the leering Frey, or even the sunlight-warmed bearskin beneath his feet. Instead he looked inwards to the heat building up inside him, as he re-imagined what was into what could be. Transforming oneself was easy enough; transforming an object required more concentration. But transforming another being, and especially a being so infused with their own magic – Loki doubted these two warriors, of the Aesir and Vanir races, uninitiated in what they called trickery and deceit, could even grasp what level of mastery it required. Thor's magic was fighting him every step of the way. It was not a conscious resistance: just the strength of Thor's person, the certainty of a man who was only ever one thing. The fact was there was no duplicity to Thor's mind, making it, and everything connected to it, difficult to manipulate. Loki supposed he could call this integrity, or honesty, or transparency. On the other hand, he might as well choose to call this a tragic lack of imagination.

Loki opened his eyes unaware he had closed them. He took a deep breath to steady himself, suddenly lightheaded, and then looked over the result.

The woman before him had a square jaw, high cheekbones and a nose which was only slightly too big for femininity. Her lips, however, were surprisingly full and smooth and her eyebrows rode high on her forehead in a wilful, defiant manner. It was unmistakeably Thor peering at him from behind her blue-grey eyes, but she was also unmistakeably a woman.

As for her body… Well, she wasn't a delicate flower. Still, at least her shoulders fit into the dress now without threatening to break the seams, while its hem dangled around her ankles a full three or so inches below where it had been a few moments ago. Instead of Thor's enormous chest muscles, the front of it was filled in with two generous breasts – the best Loki could do to suggest a woman's body, and the previously tragically flapping bottom half filled in at the hips to create a waist.

"Well done," Frey said clasping Loki's shoulder. "You've shaved him."

"Fuc-, did you not notice the tits?" Loki pointed to Thor's bulging bosom, while Frey gasped for breath, barely containing his laughter.

"Yes, very subtle. They don't help," Frey concluded and took his leave before either the smouldering Thor or the exasperated Loki could retaliate against his delighted snickers. "I mean, I don't know if that works for you, Loki…" Frey's voice echoed in from the hallway, trailing after the man himself.

"Bring me a mirror!" Thor demanded with a note of concern. At least his voice, although still rough, was a womanly alto and not his usual booming bass. Unused to a different voice issuing from his own throat, Thor made a confused face and tentatively touched his neck. While Loki laboured to uncover a polished oval from beneath the discarded dresses and veils spread out on Thor's bed, Thor experimentally touched his breasts, than straightened out the fabric over his newly acquired waist. Than went back to his breasts.

Loki put up the mirror and, with Frey out of the room, looked at his work a bit more critically. "Ah… Well, Frey was right. You were never going to be a pretty woman."

"It's not as bad as that," commented Thor, trying to make himself believe it.

"You look better than your wife when I climbed off of her," Loki agreed happily, invoking the old quip.

"Don't even start with me," Thor said. Surely he'd meant to bark it menacingly as he usually did, but between the feminized face and the honey-flavoured alto voice, if came off as pouting. Loki leered at him, while Thor looked himself over in the mirror with ever more care, exactly as a woman might. "Well, maybe when you get me a proper dress," he said slowly.

"When_ I_ get you a proper dress?" Loki repeated in an amused voice very aware that his friend had just mobilised him into this feather-brained plan.

Thor stopped compulsively rubbing his cheeks and neck, ostensibly confused by the lack of beard, to say in a dry, nasal tone, "You are enjoying this far too much, you know that, right?"

Loki sighed, infusing his voice with a bit of seriousness. "A dress won't do it. Thrym is not only _not_ completely deaf, dumb and blind, but he is also not an idiot."

"I just have to get close enough to tear him apart," said Thor, frowning at his reflection.

Loki put the mirror down and looked his friend in the eyes, which were now, strangely, on a slightly lower lever than his own. "Thrym is also not a little bitch, Ennilang. You will be deep in his realm, where his power is. If you think you can just flip him around and screw him up the arse, this is going to get much worse than it is already."

"I don't need you to tell me-," Thor protested but Loki stopped what was surely going to be an outpour of boastfulness.

"Fine, fine. I'll come with you."

"Wh-?" grunted Thor, at that moment so much like himself even in this faux-form that Loki had to laugh.

"I'll be your maid," Loki said, unbuckling his belt to set his dagger, pouch and flask aside. As he was speaking, he started finding new form, like remembering a fantasy. "After all, Freya would have arrived with a maid."

Turning himself into a woman was, comparatively, a task as easy as breathing. He could feel the magic filling him up, the vision becoming real. During the transformation, the body he inhabited did not feel like his body at all, just an imagined thing, a dream thing that he could mould at his will. Time also melted and changed – just a few brief moments extended into a pleasant uncertainty of dream-time. Then, just as gently, he seemed to wake up in a new body, enjoying the fact that his leather doublet suddenly felt tight around his chest, that his feet no longer completely filled his boots.

Thor had flopped down onto the bed staring at the transformation with a baffled expression and Loki had to remind himself that it was only very rarely that Thor witnessed this type of magic. He smiled, throwing a glance at the mirror to confirm his new face. A handsome woman, red-haired and dark-eyed, his own twin sister, was being reflected in its polished surface as she started to strip her male clothes. Thor stared on with a dumb expression – so much lovelier on his female face than usually, while Loki wriggled out of the doublet.

"How about it?" Loki said, throwing the doublet and under-shirt across the heap of other clothes on Thor's bed.

"Why are you the prettier one?" Thor complained.

"Flattery, Goat Master? You make me blush," said Loki and unfastened his trousers, eyeing one of the dresses to complete his transformation.

Thor, however, made no comment, but only pouted some more. "You made yourself prettier."

"Well, because, look at you. You slouch, glowering, feet apart. I can do magic, Odinson, not miracles," Loki said, thoroughly enjoying the fact that Thor's eyes were squarely on the woman prancing nude in front of his bed, for the moment completely unaware of his own change. "You must learn to inhabit a woman's body," Loki said, coming closer. "Own her voice. Move like a woman," he whispered, putting his hands on Thor's knees to lean closer. "Think like a woman."

"I am thinking like a man now," Thor said with a pointed grimace at the hand-sized, shapely breasts Loki had given himself.

"I thought you'd never notice," Loki commented, playfully licking Thor's lips before a rather large, calloused hand closed over his face.

"I'd rather put my cock in a snake, mate," Thor stated affectionately.

"Same thing really," Loki snickered and gave up his sport to put on a green dress he'd selected when a new thought formed. He looked over to Thor who was also trying to find a better-fitting dress to change into. "Although, it occurs to me. You cannot switch back and forth as you please but I can," Loki stated offhandedly.

"Yes?"

"Well, you cannot put it in the snake, but I might put the snake in you," he finished to see Thor's face pale.

"You will not! You will not turn back while I am a woman, Horse-mother, or I'll beat your teeth out of your head!"

Loki laughed at his friend's honest terror. "Alright, alright, alright. I won't!"

"No, you swear it!"

"I promise," said Loki only to be met with more disbelief. "I swear."

"Swear it on your children," Thor insisted.

Loki hesitated. "… how about I swear it on only one child?"

"Loki!" shouted Thor.

"I swear, I swear it on my children!" he laughed while Thor threw the grey dress at his head. "Crying shame, though."

Their good-natured teasing went on for a while more before they managed to choose half a dozen dresses that Thor could fit into without tearing them.

In truth, it was hardly a little task that awaited him. Thrym was, as Loki had told Thor, not an idiot, but a shrewd and powerful man, who now asked for that thing which Asgard had held hostage almost since the beginning of time – Freya, the Spring, the Rejuvenation, in exchange for the safe return of Thor's awesome hammer.

How Thor came to misplace the most powerful object in his possession, and one in whose acquirement Loki had personally shed blood, was a question he would pose to his friend only once Mjölnir was safely recovered. However, what the Alfödr and Loki himself truly wanted to know was how Thrym managed to bind the hammer to himself – a hammer that the Alfödr personally bound to his eldest son alone. And so, while Loki would have gladly come to Jötunheim with Thor had Thor asked for help, and even if he hadn't the mystery of Thrym's magic had motivated Odin to entrust Loki with the task. After all, the Aesir looked down on Jötunn magic, or indeed any kind of magic other than their own, which was innate and specific to them, so short of going himself, the Alfödr had only Loki to fall back on for this. As he'd explained at length. Loki listened patiently to Odin's arguments perfectly aware that Odin could have convinced him to go just by saying "Thor would have to masquerade as Freya". Or just by asking it.

Of all the Aesir residing in Asgard, Loki liked but a handful, and but a handful liked him. They were all civil to him, and how could they not be, for Odin himself was his blood brother, and they were content enough with that to let him share their table, their conversation, their lives. But no matter their willingness to eat and drink with him, laugh with him, and if need be fight with him on their side, Loki knew that every single one of the Aesir was forever and always aware that he was not one of them, that he was somehow completely, dangerously different.

All, that is, except Odin who brought him to Asgard in the first place; and Thor, his eldest son who befriended him.

Loki owed much to Odin and felt towards him a profound gratitude and an uncommon loyalty. But Thor he simply outright liked. He liked him for all the reasons Thor was so difficult to handle: his honesty, his straightforwardness, his stubbornness, his excess, his uncompromising nature. Come to think of it, these were all also the ways in which Thor was different from Loki. Whatever the case, Loki knew he would do anything Thor asked, as long as he was appropriately embarrassed by asking it.

He doubted that the Goat Master knew how rare that was, being one of those even rarer men who did great and good things because they needed to be done, and requiring no other reason.

It was high noon when Loki and Thor were ready to depart Thor's great house. His wife, Sif, saw them onto their horses, the amused expression on her face at seeing her husband now her wife shading over with worry.

"Honestly, woman," said Thor, looking at her face.

"It's a normal response," Sif protested then got on tip toe to plant a quick kiss on his lips. Thor kept it from being quick by grasping her waist to keep her pressed against his chest.

Loki, leaning on the saddle in an unladylike manner, smirked. "I could watch that all day, ladies."

Sif gallantly ignored him, busying herself with arranging her husband's many veils. "It is ridiculous, though, I'll say that much."

"What is?" inquired Thor but Sif shook her head and turned to Loki.

"No funny business," she said, her long golden hair rippling gently with her movement.

Loki suddenly thought of another time he had occasion to watch Sif's rippling hair, but then came to his senses. "I don't get a kiss?"

Sif rolled her eyes around and sighed with exacerbation. She gave Thor, now safely planted onto his horse, another caring look, threw a concerned one Loki's way as well, and then slapped their horses' flanks. The horses jerked to a canter and out of Thor's courtyard.

"Be safe," Sif shouted after them. "Both of you!" Thor and Loki raised their right hands that they had heard her and continued downhill, through the brightly lit, bustling streets of Asgard.

"Hey, why didn't we give Thrym your wife instead?" Loki asked as the many inhabitants of Asgard looked up to see two Aesir women on horseback.

"Are you trying to be funny or is that an actual question?" Thor asked from under his stifling veils.

"Actual question. I could've gone with her, gotten Mjölnir… She would've passed for Freya much more easily. And we could've rekindled our old passion."

Thor did not take the bait too busy trying to keep the many layers of delicate fabric from getting into his mouth. "Sif travel with you? She'd strangle you, Skywalker. Before you even reached the Bifröst."

Loki grinned and then felt compelled to point out, "You don't have to have the veils over your face now. It's only for when we actually get to Jötunhem."

"I am not going to be seen with tits in my own home town, thank you," Thor replied, spitting out and puffing at the veils which insisted on clinging to his face tightly. They reached the bottom of the valley and the edge of Asgard's walls. Loki looked at the large gate stones fondly, then had to readjust his horse quickly when Thor turned left at the gates.

"Where were you going?" Thor inquired.

"Spaced out," said Loki, following quickly. He frowned at the force of his own habit. Unlike almost any of the Aesir, when he left Asgard to travel across the Nine Worlds, he did not seek out Himinbjörg and the Keeper of the Bifröst bridge. It was not that travelling across the realms without using the Bifröst was forbidden. It was simply that doing so did not occur to the Aesir or the Vanir living with them, who had no reason not to want their whereabouts known. And who had no reason to particularly dislike Heimdall.

Himinbjörg, the only hall of the gods outside of the protection of Asgard's city walls, except Loki's own, soon came to tower over them, its crystalline surface betraying nothing except its owner's opaque and unilateral character. They were admitted into the open hallway which ran through the centre of the building and seemingly dropped off a cliff at the other end. Heimdall sat in the shade on the side of the road, eyes over the edge of this world.

"Jötunheim, is it?" he inquired without turning to look at them.

"That's the idea," said Thor miserably. Heimdall let his lips rise in a miniscule smile and Loki found himself for the very first time in their long acquaintance suspecting Heimdall of a sense of humour.

"Very well," said Heimdall, deep voice ever calm and monotone. As he spoke, the edge of the cliff gained substance, but only a shimmering one, like the surface of a calm lake, a mere suggestion that the thing had any mass. Thor and Loki nodded thanks to Heimdall and stepped out onto the deceptive surface. As they did, they could no longer see Himinbjörg behind them, nor the hills and walls of Asgard, nor anything of the world whatsoever. This was the high road, Loki reminded himself, and up this high there was nothing to look at, except his slouching companion.

Thor finally removed the veils and turned to Loki. "Long ride?"

"The Bifröst is always a long ride. Long, boring-ass ride."

"No, I mean through Jötunheim."

"It's a bit of a way," nodded Loki.

Thor frowned. "What did you bring?"

"Thinking about food already, Ennilang?" Loki chided.

"I meant in the way of steel."

Loki nodded to himself. He was sure this was not the first time the odds have occurred to Thor, but this was the time he decided to discuss them and get Loki's take on the strategic situation. Typically, it was after they had already set off but that was just the way Thor operated.

"Enough to fight out of a skirmish," said Loki, watching Thor closely. It wasn't that Thor was powerless without Mjölnir, not even by far. However, if the opposition was able to wield it – well that could turn the tables in a decisive and unpleasant way. "Not enough to storm a castle," Loki added prudently.

"Hm," Thor commented.

"Yes, we are kind of counting on this masquerade not to go entirely balls-up."

"And so it won't."

"And we are kind of counting on going in and going out quickly."

Thor nodded slowly, a strand of his stubborn hair coming out of the complicated bun his servants had managed to tame it into, and suddenly reminding Loki they were both in women's bodies. "Speed up, yeah?" Thor said finally.

"Better do," Loki replied, and they both poked their heels into the horses' flanks. Soundlessly, the horses lurched forward, on and on, into what seemed an eternity of straight road beneath and an iridescent sky above until Loki and Thor could see something in the way. They continued forward. It seemed to come to greet them, until, suddenly, it swallowed them, like the lightning flash illuminating the world for a heartbeat. And just like that Thor and Loki were in the heart of Jötunheim. And what an old and frosty heart it was.

* * *

NOTES:

Ennilang: "Wide forehead", a kenning of Thor that I think Loki would use to make fun of him.

Horse Mother: a kenning I think Thor would use when he wanted to make fun of Loki.

Aesir: the race of "gods" of Asgard; As is the singular masculine, Asynja feminine.

Also, hello. This is not an Avengers fanfiction, hopefully this much is clear. I am just exploring my take on Norse myth.

_All the dramatic episodes and characters here are copyright of traditional Scandinavian and Icelandic tales, as found in the Poetic and Prose Edda, and some other sources. However, some are reinterpreted or changed slightly to suit my dark purpose. I encourage any of you who are interested in what the original story might have been, or how it pertains to what I have written here, to either ask me directly or research online._

_Having said that, it shouldn't matter too much whether or not you are an expert on Norse mythology or not; everything gets explained eventually. I hope._

_Except in some cases in which an alternate spelling is more common, I use John Lindow's guide to Norse mythology for names of people and places._


	2. Chapter 2

**Of How Thor Became the Bride of Thrym, part 2**

"Fuck me, how do women do this! My legs are freezing," Thor said rubbing his ankles and thighs, oblivious to the dress riding high up on his legs.

"Or for fuc-, would you at least try and act like a lady?"

"What?"

"When have you last seen your wife rubbing herself in public?" Loki said, then stopped to contemplate the mental image. So did Thor, for he thankfully stopped trying to warm his bare sides sporting a vacant expression on his face.

"Pull the veil over your snout," Loki ordered. "And try not to blow our cover too soon. You are Freya now. Try saying Freya-esque things."

"Like what?" grumbled the woman behind the veil and, alto voice or no, she sounded exactly like Thor.

"Actually, you know what? Don't talk at all," Loki concluded pointing his horse east through the bleak terrain. Jötunheim was all rock and wind and low grasses and moss until one reached the patches of millennial forest of pine, fir, larch, cedar and spruce. But they would stay away from the forests on this trip.

For a time the two riders were silent while their horses battled the uneven terrain. Finally, the warring boulders and moss gave way to a muddy path.

"East, until beyond the pass," said Loki, pointing to the narrow valley cut in two by a small but vicious river. "And then up the mountain until we are above the marshes."

Thor nodded, silent and calculating. Loki too checked his waist for the long dagger concealed there, next to the decorative golden chains and bunches of keys appropriate for a woman who would be mistress of a household. Thor was uncomfortable with what he saw as flimsy weapons the ladies of Aesir and Vanir carried about their person, and Loki found himself agreeing. How _did_ women do it? Of course, as he'd told Thor, he'd concealed as many other weapons about his person and luggage as physically possible without using warping magic which would have alerted any clever observer, as Jötnar were much more acute to the presence of deception; and he was sure Thor did the same. Still, he wondered if Thor wished for Mjölnir as much as Loki wished to have Laevateinn at his side now, to feel its anchoring weight. However, their disguise would have been even more ridiculous had they shown up dressed as women, carrying with their own, unique weapons. It would have been almost as stupid as coming down on Thrym in Thor's brass carriage, as Thor had initially suggested.

No, reflected Loki, Thrym was certainly not deaf, dumb, blind or stupid. But that he would have magic to rival the Alfödr…

"I would get off the road," came the voice Loki realized was Thor's only after a confused moment.

Loki thought about it. "It would be even more dangerous off it. Thrym is lord of the region, I doubt trouble will seek us out on the way to his house."

"I know you tend to forget this, Laufeyjarson, but the Aesir are not exactly welcome in Jötunheim," Thor said slowly. "And we are riding in as women."

Loki could not resist. "Well, I'm riding in as a woman. You are riding in as my biggest failure."

"You admit you've made yourself prettier on purpose, you little cuntwipe!" Thor shouted over Loki's sniggering. The shout broke across the hills a bit too loudly.

"Best I could do with the material," said Loki in a much quieter voice. Thor retaliated something about Loki's general character but the banter died down completely as they descended to the bottom of the valley and searched for a place to ford the river. Loki considered what Thor had said. Loki rode into Jötunheim often, alone and unencumbered with fear because this, also, was to him home. Or as much of a home as anything was. Did he truly never consider just what degree of hate the Jötunn had for Aesir-kind? He looked around familiar hills, trying to see them as inhospitable, barren and treacherous – the way the peoples of Asgard and Vanaheim saw these lands, but couldn't. Sure, it would never be as warm and pleasant this far North as it was in Asgard or the world of men, but the salty air, the black rock rising from many-coloured moss: to Loki these had a charm of their own.

Their horses made it through the shallow part of the river without ruining their mounts' dresses too much and now they laboured up the steep, jagged hill that would take them finally to Thrym's hall.

"So what manner of house does this Thrym have?" asked Thor, careful to keep his voice light and muffled.

"We are not really going to wed you to the man," Loki snickered.

"I want to know what to expect. Mud hut? Cave, what?"

"It's… not a hut," said Loki turning on his horse to look back at Thor, behind him on the narrow path. "Thrym is a rich man."

"But he can't afford a proper road," Thor complained.

"Jötunn don't go round to each other's houses to drink their neighbour's wine and fuck their neighbour's wives. As a matter of fact, that sort of thing is frowned upon. The road is so that only those Thrym wants in his house can come to him at any one time."

"So we are talking fortress?"

"You'll see," Loki gave up trying to explain. "Sometimes I forget how little you know about Jötnar."  
"Yes, you spend too much time with my father."  
"I wouldn't compare you to the Alfödr, Ennilang. That would be a disservice."

"He knows too much about everything," Thor agreed.

"Or you too little."

"Yeah, keep it coming, that's right, Skywalker. And when I get the hammer back, then what?" Thor said, finally managing a menacing growl with his new voice.

"I will dearly lament the sudden lack of tits. And here we are, milady," Loki announced.

One last bend in the steep road revealed a rocky clearing and at the bottom of it a massive structure, partially cut into the living mountain and paned top to bottom with thick glass, glinting in Jötunheim's subdued, silvery twilight.

"Not a mud shack then," Thor whispered as they dismounted in the courtyard. Silent servants stood by to receive their horses, while a particularly pretty young man bowed for them to follow him inside.

A woman was waiting for them in the dimly lit hall. She was tall and hard eyed, tightly bound hair the colour of iron. "Welcome, beautiful Freya. Welcome to my son's house," she said and Loki bit his tongue barely in time for she had spoken in the local tongue, and not the language of Asgard. Thor, who naturally did not understand a word, looked to Loki in confusion before the woman spoke again, this time in the common tongue. "Welcome, Freya of the Spring and Black Earth, to my son's house."

Loki quickly curtsied, while Thor gave a dignified if shallow bow to his supposed future mother-in-law.

"We thank you for your hospitality," Loki said.

"Forgive me, you are?"

"Ljot, in my lady's service, madam," he answered and felt a cold chill pass him. The old woman was probing for deception. She would be able to find none, Loki had as much confidence, but he would not risk letting her search for too long. "My lady has come a long way and is eager to make herself presentable for her future husband," said Loki.

"Of course," said Thrym's mother. "We have prepared a feast. The boy will show you the way to a room where you can freshen up."

Loki curtsied again, Thor nodded stiffly, and they ascended a large stone staircase following the young page. Loki felt the woman's eyes burrowing into his back. The boy showed them into a magnificent chamber that overlooked the valley. It was lavished in white, golden and forest green, the colours Jötnar most respected. The page filled two cups with some sort of beverage and set them aside should the ladies want to drink.

"Shrewd old cunt," Loki said once the boy left.

"Who is?" asked Thor, hood off and veils up.

"Your mother-in-law. Fucked if she wasn't testing me," Loki hissed.

"Testing you how?" inquired Thor. They had both carried in their own satchels instead of leaving them for the servants and Thor now had his unravelled on the large table at the bottom of the room.

"By speaking the North tongue," said Loki. "And then by looking for untruths. I swear the she-serpent searched me."

"Hm," said Thor, seating himself at the table to go over the small arsenal he'd brought. He selected a particularly nasty looking slaughter knife and propped his right leg on the chair next to him. Folding the skirts back, he attached the leather holster to his thigh and deposited the knife inside.

Loki took the cue and, throwing away his travelling coat, attached two holstered daggers to his calf. Then both men shed the outer skirts, dirty from the journey, to reveal softer, lighter fabrics underneath, Thor's in the customary white, and Loki's a pale green in honour of their hosts.

"Ready for dinner," Thor concluded with a nasty smirk that suited him even as a woman.

"Yeah, let's make it a good one," said Loki. He came up to Thor, who started gobbling up the mysterious drink left them, and attempted to reattach his fiery hair into a semblance of a coiffure. "Ennilang," he said quietly. "Don't do anything until we see Mjölnir."

"Anything like?"  
"Like cut his throat or threaten his mother. Or for that matter, threaten him and cut his mother's throat."

"I won't," growled Thor.

"Or fart at his table and stuff your face. I will get him to show us his treasures. But do nothing before I tell you to. I have to see it."

Thor looked up at him, pretty eyebrows quirked in charming sarcasm. Thor, as a woman, had what they called a memorable face; the sort of face you only found beautiful on the second or even third look, but once you noticed how alive it was with character you could never stop noticing that beauty. Loki, as a woman, was the exact opposite of that: handsome, but unmemorable, to be admired and then forgotten; the perfect disguise for a spy. He smirked and kissed Thor on the cheek as women do. "Just let me see it first, and I will have him put it in your own hand."

"If you say so," shrugged Thor.

"And then you'll be a man again, and you can put it in my hand, if you want," Loki cooed, lowering Thor's veils.

"A snake, mate. Sooner a snake."

A knock on the door revealed the same page, come to fetch the refreshed ladies. Loki and Thor filed out, Thor for a change taking small steps and even waving his hips. They were led not down the stairs but into another wing of the house. A splendid iron studded pine door opened into an enormous hall paved in white stone and covered with the furs of white foxes. A fire was raging at the centre of a large, U-shaped table at the head of which stood tall Thrym himself, his mother at his side. There were no courtiers to occupy the giant spread yet the other places were set for them with plates, goblets and knives worthy of any table in Asgard. As per the ceremony, Loki went in first, Thor swaying his hips even harder behind him.

Thrym smiled at them in greeting. He was a full head taller than Thor was tall as a woman, but rather than look stretched and insecure on his feet, he looked taut and powerful, like a particularly big eagle. And equally arrogant.

"My love," he addressed Thor. "Welcome to my hall." He took a step forward expecting Loki to move out of the way, but Loki stubbornly stood his ground.

"My lady is most grateful for your kind welcome. She is also impressed by the splendour of your house. The tales did not do it justice at all."

"Oh," said Thrym. "You are Ljot in my lady's service, are you not?"

"Indeed, my lord."

"Your lady does not speak?" said Thrym's mother as what was surely supposed to pass for a friendly quip but Loki felt the chill of her probing eyes again. This time he was ready for her and only made his face into a pleasant expression of confusion.

"I must speak for her, Milady," said Loki as if this was the most natural thing in the world. "Once the marriage is decided a husband must not hear his wife's voice until she vows to him. She may only speak to her maid."

"Oh," Thrym repeated. "How very different from our customs. Isn't that interesting, mother? Shall we to table?" He pointed to the tall-backed and intricately carved chairs, but instead of coming off as gallant and fluid, the movement was just a little bit jerky. He was further shaken when without a word Loki plopped into the chair Thrym had no doubt meant to offer to Thor, while Thor took the one on the other side of Loki, successfully not sitting next to his betrothed. Foiled again, Thrym sank into his fur covered seat and took a sip from his cup, thick iron-coloured eyebrows drawing together unhappily. His mother observed the exchange from her position to the right of her son, cold eyes darting over all present.

Loki savoured the expression on Thrym's face: that of a man who had had the entire encounter planned but completely lost his cue, until he heard loud gulping sounds coming from his left. Thor had manoeuvred one of the goblets under the veils and was greedily guzzling down whatever alcohol could be found within. Loki paled in despair.

"You seem very thirsty, Milady?" Thrym said awkwardly no longer sure whether he should be speaking to Thor directly or to his self-proclaimed mouth-piece.

"My lady," Loki answered, stressing the word so that Thor would get the message, "has fasted for two full days now in expectation of the nuptials to come. Being only permitted drink, it is a joy to find so fine, erm, an ale at your table," he finished, having finally brought the cup to his nose and gauged it for what it was.

"Permitted only drink? Is this also for the duration of the engagement?" Thrym asked.

"Only in the groom's house," Loki confided another bit of instant-lore.

"Then we must wed soon, otherwise my love will wither away entirely," Thrym said, trying very hard to catch Thor's eye but Thor was staring deftly at Loki for having just proclaimed he would have to fast and pass out on what would surely have been a rich feast Thrym had prepared in Freya's honour.

"Your lady also does not remove her veil," Thrym's mother put in again. "Is she not allowed to show her face either?"

"But of course not!" Loki said aghast as if the old woman had suggested Thor flop his arse out on the table and spread the cheeks for inspection. He then leaned over to Thor, pretending his lady had bid him convey another message. Confused, irritated and getting impatient with this game, Thor only managed a low hiss.

"My lady says," Loki translated. "That it will be a joy to be rid of them and be able to look upon her husband with clear eyes. She has heard so many stories, and yet again reality surpasses."

"What stories? I would hear them," said Thrym who was, just like all men of his standing, not above a little flattery.

Loki leaned in conspiratorially to the man, head level with the Jötunn's shoulder. "She has heard of the great mountain house, but we had not realized that the whole mountain served as your house, carved to suit you. And within – nothing as she had imagined it: not darkness and frost, but this beauty, this abundance."

"Oh, but it is so much lovelier still when the sun comes out," said Thrym, gesturing over Loki's head to Thor who was busy with his second cup of ale. Thor nodded to him demurely and let his cup be filled again by one of the servants. "You really must see it in the morning."  
"I am sure my lady would want nothing more," Loki said happily.

It was then that a row of servants trudged in with trays laden with juicy meats and all sorts of delicacies that were surely not easily found in Jötunheim. Thrym must have had them brought from the world of men. Loki felt himself salivate at the rich smells of spice, fruit, bronzed pork and herb-laden fowl. But now the master of the house found himself saying, "No, no, take it all away. We will only take drink. I will not touch food until we can do it together, my Spring."

Thor inclined his head and in a flash of inspiration reached over Loki to briefly clasp Thrym's hand. His goal, however, became clear when he punched Loki in the ribs while retracting his hand. Thor then leaned into the ear of his maid to whisper, "I will yet fuck you for the food, Skywalker. Move it along!"

Loki continued smiling and nodding. "My lady thanks you from the bottom of her heart, and promises that you will both feast at the very next sunset. She says that you are as kind, temperate and generous as she had been told."

"She had been told so many good things about my son," the she-serpent said from the other side of the table watching her somewhat besotted son with displeasure. "We wouldn't have thought it so from the mouths of Aesir-kind."

"The Aesir can be unfair, that is true," Loki said carefully, pretending to confer with Thor. "But even they could not fail to praise your son, Milady. His many treasures are well known even in Asgard, as is his firm and just nature. And his powerful magic."

Thrym took the flattery with grace only to add, "I am now at a loss. I must live up to these stories."

"But you are doing," Loki said, eyelids fluttering.

"Yet your lady would not have come had my son not taken Mjölnir, the Goat Master's hammer," the old woman put in shrewdly. Thor dug his nails into the chair at the nickname.

"A happy occasion that he has, then," Loki replied smoothly. "The Thunder is most embarrassed by the loss, that much has to be said."

"My intention was not to embarrass Odin's son," Thrym put in. "Merely to form for myself a new alliance. He would have his hammer back if he but came and asked for it."

Loki could hear Thor grind his teeth. "A man must know when he has been bested," Loki agreed, nodding knowingly. "Otherwise he proves himself a coward. My lady has said so to me herself."

Thrym's mother finally relented and raised her eyebrows in appreciation. "She has said so?"  
"Indeed, Milady," Loki half-bowed with his hand over his chest. "Yet Mjölnir is not the only treasure you possess, is that not so, Milord? We have heard there are many precious and unique things contained in your mountain where you have acquired them through bravery and cunning. My lady would so dearly love to see them and hear the tales." Loki pretend-conferred with Thor, who took the opportunity to whisper insults, before announcing with a ripple of laughter, "And especially how you came by Mjölnir itself! The Thunder would not say a word about how it was lost."

Thrym gave a knowing smile, making himself look even more arrogant than usual, and rose from the table. "It would be my pleasure to show you around."

This time not waiting for Loki to come between them, Thrym offered his hand to Thor, who was trying to look ladylike while getting out of the chair. Then, oddly, he offered his other hand to Loki, the sly old fox. Loki attached himself admiringly onto Thrym's elbow, not daring to look back and check whether the she-serpent followed.

Thrym narrated his house like a man who only then realized what a big place it was. He led the two women to another large door. It yielded to his touch even though there was no lock and, as they passed through it, Loki spotted lines of the Old Writing carved into the frame. He frowned at their presence while Thrym made the room within come alight with fire. Suddenly they were bathed in gold for it shone from all sides: reflected in delicate dwarf-made artefacts and in dirty human coin alike.

"Oh," Loki breathed while Thrym looked to his betrothed for a reaction. Thor obligingly put a hand up to his mouth then ran over to his maid like a woman who would confirm the wonder with her friend.

"Where is it? Do you see it?" he whispered.

"My lady is most surprised. Some things in here must be entirely unique. She can feel their power."

"Some things in here are indeed unique. And very powerful. But you don't need any of such magic, my Spring," Thrym added to Thor. "Your magic is yourself."

"My lady wonders whether you can wield all of these objects?" Loki asked.

"Oh, most of them I have no need of," Thrym said, trying to sound modest and not succeeding. "But some I use at will, yes."  
"And Mjölnir?" inquired Loki.

"I have no need for Mjölnir," Thrym stated somewhat stiffly. "Not as a magical object."

"Oh, but my lady would so like to see it. Touch it?" Loki said, looking pleadingly from Thor to Thrym.

"Of course," Thrym said, offering his hand to Thor again. "It is right through here."

Loki let the happy couple take a few steps ahead of him. The she-serpent had not followed them into Thrym's treasure chamber. Loki took out one of his daggers, whispered to it and threw it behind him. It stuck into the wood of the door frame and the Old Script on it disappeared. Quickly, he followed Thrym and Thor to hear, "…and that is how I came by Mjölnir, in short. I shall have to tell you the full story some day when I can do it justice. And when you can ask me anything you would further want to know with your own sweet voice."

Thor nodded at Thrym's words but Loki could tell from the dangerous tautness of his back that his attention was glued onto something else. And there it was, on an iron table: Mjölnir, with the Old Script cast in the iron around it. This spell Loki could not lift with a knife; Thrym would have to lift it himself. Thor's hands, winking from beneath his long sleeves, were fisted and white-knuckled but he had kept his promise. Loki came up to them, and Thor turned to his maid once more. He said nothing, just waited, eyes from behind the veil locked firmly onto Loki's.

"My lady wonders whether she could touch it? Would you give it to her to touch just the hilt?"

"Of course," Thrym said. He picked up the hammer. Thor stopped breathing. So did Loki.

"Milady?" Thrym offered and turned the handle of Mjölnir towards Thor.

"Fucking finally," Thor breathed even as his hand clasped around it. The change was momentous and momentary. Thor burst up to his full height, the dress' delicate sleeves ripping at his muscles, and in a graceful arch of his weapon sent Thrym flying to the other side of the room.

"I'm gonna open his head," Thor roared. "Goat Master! Hah! Come and ask for it, the fuck-!"

"No, you will not!" shouted Loki. "We are getting out of here." He touched the iron table knowing it to be an old and powerful object and with regret, ordered, "Smash this instead."

Thor obeyed. With a strike of Mjölnir he folded the iron table in onto itself. It tumbled to the floor, where, half-melted and shapeless, it glowed a heated, angry orange. The Old Writing shrivelled sadly, no longer legible. Half buried in his treasure, Thrym moaned in pain; soon his servants and guards would descend upon them.

"Come on," said Loki. At the door he bent down to retrieve his knife, and followed Thor as they ran quietly towards their chambers. They burst through what Loki hoped was the correct door only to find Thrym's mother going through their satchels. She was sufficiently startled by the appearance of a large, red haired man protruding from a torn bridal dress that it gave Loki enough time to slip towards her and punch the old dragon to the floor. She crumpled at his feet and from her robes issued a handful of brass leaflets, the Old Script on them. Hardly breathing, Loki gathered them and stuffed them hastily into his dress.

"Let's go!" Thor called, throwing him his satchel and overcoat. They ran down the stairs then tiptoed across the main hall to find themselves out in Thrym's front court. One of the guards saw them and while he was still making his mind up about what exactly he was seeing Loki downed him with the remaining dagger, the one not imbibed with magic. Around them, the darkness of Jötunheim was absolute. They would not be able to find their way down the mountain before all of Thrym's host rose up against them.

"Up, then," Thor smirked at Loki. "Hold on, Skywalker."

The heavens roared above them as Thor took Loki by the waist and pointed Mjölnir upwards. Thunder cracked from a suddenly stormy sky and the two were lifted away. As the last echo of thunder waned, they found themselves on the very hill onto which they had emerged from Bifröst half a day earlier.

"Heimdall!" Thor called but there was no need – the shimmering bridge touched the ground in front of their feet, and Jötunheim disappeared once they'd stepped onto it. They were surrounded only by the night sky and the road ahead.

Loki sighed, then looked up at Thor and started laughing. Thor observed him quizzically, looked down his body and guffawed as well.

"And you thought it was embarrassing when you were a woman," said Loki.

"You are going to stay like that then?" Thor asked still grinning.

"Either that or I will change my clothes. You didn't pack your trousers and shirt, I seem to remember."

Thor looked dubiously at the satchel he held gripped in hand. "No," he said in a small voice.

Loki laughed harder. Thor rolled his eyes and started down Bifröst on the lengthy and dull journey to Asgard, pointedly leaving Loki behind. Loki looked up at the beautiful star-spotted sky that extended onto all sides of them. Lengthy perhaps, but with Thor looking like that it could never be dull. The brass leaflets in his bodice were cold against his skin and when he picked the dress away from his body to inspect them, he could see dark lines appearing over his chest. Frowning slightly, he took the leaflets out and folded them carefully into his luggage before running to catch up with Thor.

"Would've been nice to have horses right about now," he commented, his hand on Thor's bare, entirely male shoulder.

"Hm," Thor agreed. Mjölnir, weightless to its rightful bearer, was tiny and now clasped onto the silver chain around Thor's neck.

"Are you going to tell me how you lost that thing now?"

"Not even under torture," Thor stated categorically.

"Not even if I ask nicely?" Loki said in his most simpering voice, pressing suggestively against his companion's side.

"Rather a snake, mate."

Loki chuckled. "Still, you'll have to tell the Alfödr."

Thor grumbled. "Yeah, I'll tell him. But as he loves his son, he will not tell you about it. Not even if you change into three women for him."

The night sky stretched infinitely before them, gentle wind cooling their feverish skin while their friendly banter went on. All in all, Loki decided it had been a good day indeed.

* * *

NOTES:

Laevateinn: Loki's sword that he'd made himself "at Hel's door"

_All the dramatic episodes and characters here are copyright of traditional Scandinavian and Icelandic tales, as found in the Poetic and Prose Edda, and some other sources. However, some are reinterpreted or changed slightly to suit my dark purpose. I encourage any of you who are interested in what the original story might have been, or how it pertains to what I have written here, to either ask me directly or research online._

_Having said that, it shouldn't matter too much whether or not you are an expert on Norse mythology or not; everything gets explained eventually. I hope._

_Except in some cases in which an alternate spelling is more common, I use John Lindow's guide to Norse mythology for names of people and places._


	3. Chapter 3

**Of Odin and Loki and the Future They Work Against**

"So it was the old woman?"

Odin, the Alfödr, frowned at the intricate writing etched onto brass as if it offended him personally by existing.

"It would seem so," said Loki relaxing backwards into the high grass, observing him.

"Hmm," murmured Odin. The warm, mischievous wind made his hair trail behind him like a flag of quicksilver. It had grown long and more freely streaked with white than when Loki last remembered seeing it. Odin chewed on his long pipe perched on a tree stump and peering at the valley into which Asgard was nestled like a precious pearl winking from inside the oyster. The golden afternoon whispered of rain in the evening with greasy, black clouds gathering in from the North.

"And you are not going to tell me how Thor lost his hammer?"

"I had promised not to," Odin smiled, the one visible eye crinkling around the corners. "It is Thor's privilege to be humiliated privately, by me, without having everybody know about it."  
"I can keep a secret. I would keep his if he asked."  
"I know you can keep a secret," Odin said slowly. "But I am not sure you can keep your glee to yourself."  
Loki made an innocent face and sat back up, smelling wonderfully of young grass and wildflowers. Odin passed him a leather pouch with the fine leaf and Loki gratefully thumbed some of it into his own pipe. He made the leaf come alight and inhaled a long, ponderous mouthful.

"I gave you that pipe," Odin remarked.

"So you did."

"Yes, it was after we'd come from Vafthrudnir and you supported me on the way when I was unsteady on my feet."

"I remember," said Loki. "I also remember your wife almost tearing my throat out, blaming me for your eye." He made a circle on his face to draw the borders of Odin's curse-wound, the angry red chasm where his right eye had once been, now hidden from view beneath the cloth patch. "That was the last time I was at a loss for words, I think, when Frigg charged me."  
"Yes," chuckled Odin.

"I didn't find it funny at the time," Loki said, taking a drag on the pipe and then taking a moment to look at it. It was carved from a twig of the Yggdrasil, pale and elegant, with silver studs along the length of it like young branches stemming from the eternal tree. It was a truly beautiful thing and precious to Loki, but not because it was carved from the very world tree, or because the studs on it were made from the shavings of the defeated Vanir's silver swords from the First War in the Skies. It was precious to him because Odin presented it, because he had kissed Loki on the lips and in a heavy, slow voice confided in him what he had seen in Mimir's well; because it reminded him of the time when he had once and forever gained a true brother.

It was now Odin observing him with an expression of polite interest. Loki shook his head and smiled. "I was thinking about the time you'd given this to me. About why it is precious."  
"And why is it precious, my friend?" asked Odin.  
"We had shared blood long before I ever took you to Vafthrudnir, before this city was even built," Loki said slowly, touching his chest where the heavy iron tablet that Odin had given him on that occasion was hidden. "And you had called me brother. But I did not believe you until that day, when you sought me out, weak and blind. When you told me of the fate of the world."

"I have burdened you greatly that day," Odin said.

"You have," Loki nodded. "And sometimes I wish you hadn't. But not enough to un-wish the day."

"I did not know you doubted me before that time, Laufeyjarson," Odin intoned carefully looking down at Loki from his perch on a tree stump.  
"Oh, it wasn't you that I doubted, but the hold Aesir would have on you," Loki said inclining backwards and resting on one elbow to look at the gathering storm clouds. They flashed light, once, twice, but were still too far for them to hear the thunder. The earth beneath him was chilly. "I had always expected that they would one day succeed in turning you against me. Or that I would turn against you."

"But no longer?" he heard Odin ask.

"No," Loki said slowly. "No longer."

Odin leaned on his knees and willed Loki to look him in the eye. He had an unnerving way of making people know when he really needed them to listen. "The reason the Aesir fear you-"  
"Despise me, Grimnir," Loki interjected. "Or have you put the eye patch on the wrong side?"

"One comes from the other, my friend," Odin said patiently. "The Aesir do not fear you because of your nature but in spite of it. If you were only that thing which they expect you to be, they would know how to counter you. But you are not, are you."

"Am I not?"

"You know that you are not, Laufeyjarson. You are very many things indeed."

Loki frowned, looked away and nodded slowly.

Seemingly satisfied, Odin turned back to the sunset, his grooved and saturnine face appearing serene when bathed in its light. They were few, these moments in which they could both speak their hearts without guarding that they might say too much, saying what they needed, not saying what they did not want to say. After all, Loki knew that the Alfödr had comings and goings that he did not speak of to Loki, just as he was sure the Alfödr knew there were comings and goings Loki did not share with him either. But these were not lies, and they were not secrets, simply truths not needed to be shared. Loki would never ask the Alfödr why he descended so often to the world of men, and spent many months there, growing old and weak until need drove him back to Asgard and Idunn's apples. In the same way, Odin would never ask Loki where he went when he could not be found in any of the living realms, when he could not be seen by Heimdall. If either did ask, Loki wondered whether they would tell the truth.

"Did you read them?" Odin asked suddenly.

Loki inclined his head and tried to clear his mind, clouded by the sweet smoke and senseless thoughts. "The tablets, you mean?"

"Yes."  
"No," Loki said.

"Why not?" Odin inquired.

"I did not see the need."

"You were not interested where they came from?"  
"Would reading them have told me that?"

"It may have. It may have told you why they were in Jötunn hands," Odin shrugged.

"When you tell me you want me to find that out, I will find it out," Loki shrugged back.

"Oh, it will be imperative that we find out where these crawled out from," the Alfödr said slowly, touching the brass things in a soft, private way, like a caress, as if he meant to make love to their mystery.

"Quite," said Loki. "But maybe you can do that one yourself. I am not… comfortable around those things."  
Odin let his eyebrow go up, waiting for Loki to explain. Loki busied himself with tapping the extinguished pipe against his heel to get the last bits of soot out. "When they were laid against my skin they did not grow any warmer. And the… designs became visible."  
"Oh?" Odin inquired.

"It was faint but I did not like it. And so I touched them as little as possible," Loki finished, his eyebrows crinkled. He now attacked the pipe with a corner of his shirt, determined to make it shine. "It's old, and the writing is powerful, and it had been taken lightly by those who had sought to reign in its power."

While Odin waited patiently Loki blew one last puff down the neck of his pipe before giving it up as a bad job. He put the pipe carefully away and willed his arms to be limp when they could not be calm. "Jötnar had stayed away from Elder Magic for so long it was all but lost to them. That they would reawaken to it…"  
"Yet your wife knew the Elder Magic," said Odin observing him.

Loki smirked without humour. "Testing me, are you, Grimnir. She did, and she taught me."

"A fine job she did," acknowledged Odin with an apologetic bow.

"My wife knew what those scribbles could do," Loki said nodding to the leaflets that lay half concealed in Odin's pouch like a poisonous snake. "But I fear most of us are not that smart or that insightful. We like powerful things, we like to be near them."  
"We?" Odin said with a mild tone of surprise. "I rarely hear you count yourself among the Jötnar."  
"You rarely hear me count myself into anything," Loki snorted. "But in this instance when I said 'us', I counted you as well, Alfödr."

Odin smirked and took the half-joke with grace, keeping its implied warning to himself, to ponder at another time.

The sun had dipped beneath the horizon, but a shadowy light was still alive around them. No longer playful, the wind was becoming cold and relentless, the clouds it shepherded coming upon the eastern sky like the jaws of a great beast bent on swallowing the sun. Today the sun had escaped behind the line of the world, but tomorrow?

Loki shivered. The hands in his lap seemed for a second to be lifeless things and he remembered his dream, the one that returned time and again of late.

He got up to his feet, feeling stiff, for the moment forgetting his company. The storm was almost upon them, touching the outskirts of their safety, their certainty. Loki gazed down at the city beneath trying to remember that nostalgia that he'd felt in Jötunheim but couldn't just at that moment. The layout of city walls, its streets, the rivers and mountains around it seemed utterly alien.

But then so did the primal magic that had so briefly appeared on his chest, like bruises do the day after a fight.

"Aesir have very many enemies," he heard himself speak. "Nowhere more so than in Jötunheim. I had never noticed the depth of that hatred until I went there with Thor, as one of you. It is as if they believe you have stolen the sunlight from them. And you have, perhaps. You have laid claim to Spring and Earth and Sea and Life."

He could hear Odin getting up behind him, the rub of his leather garments, the clank as the brass leaflets dropped against each other in the bag on his belt. The Alfödr came now to stand behind Loki, waiting. Loki knew that when he turned he would have to negotiate the bright blue-grey wisdom of Odin's glare. He bided his time.

The first rain touched the ground only as a gentle spray, barely more than a mist. Loki turned to Odin and thought of the tablets, of Elder Magic, of the dream he did not wish to recall, of the thing that was pressing on him like the clouds were pressing on the mountain tops.

"You must believe, Alfödr, that I do not wish for it," he whispered.

"For what, Loki?" Odin asked just to make him say the word.

"Ragnarök."

Odin nodded. "I know you do not wish for it."

"And you must believe that none in Jötunheim wish for it either. No matter their hatred and little schemes," Loki said, nodding to encompass the latest affair, the counter-binding of Mjölnir and the accursed brass tablets. "Nobody wishes for it."

"That will not prevent it," Odin mouthed.  
"Perhaps postpone it. Indefinitely," Loki bargained with Odin's steely stare.

"No, never indefinitely," said the Alfödr and looked away, into his own thoughts, letting Loki breathe again. "We know only a small part of the whole, only the end result, and everything we do, everything we attempt as we try to avoid it: sometimes I believe that it may in fact be bringing us closer to exactly where we are trying to run away from."  
"How- So, what..." Loki blurted. "What is the purpose of everything we do?!" He did not mean to shout but had to overpower the noise in his head. There was something very loud there, suddenly sounding; an anger he'd glimpsed in himself before and as of late easily incited.

"Is there no purpose if there is no chance of success?" Odin asked.

"Oh, riddles! The time for riddles then," Loki hissed trying to reign his voice in. "A futile toil? No, there is no purpose in it!" He realized they were both of them wet, and the world was dark.

Odin, voice maddeningly calm and gaze distant, inclined his head towards an uncertain future. "A futile toil? Or the last stand in a losing battle?"

"You would do this to prove defiance? Oh, is it Weordmyndum again? Spare me!" Loki snarled. He grabbed Odin's shoulder to have him look at him. "Gapthrosnir, I let you bind my son for this! I let you banish my daughter and sink my other son to the bottom of the world sea, Hangatyr! For nothing?!"

"No, no. No, not for nothing," Odin said, finally turning to him again, and for a moment seeming surprised to see him standing there.

"We cannot know it," Odin said in a harassed voice placing his hand over Loki's on his shoulder. The hand looked somehow shrivelled and infirm, but it was warm, incredibly, soothingly warm.

"Wolf's Father," Odin whispered urgently, calling Loki by the name only he uttered without disrespect. "Forgive me. These are ramblings of an old man. I am tired, I need peace. I need to stop the world and sit at its pinnacle, and see through it. Or I need to take out this other eye and never be distracted by meaningless sights again."

Loki felt his anger ebbing away as he looked into the Alfödr's anguished face. He made his numb mouth produce a smile. "Don't do that. How would I ever explain it to Frigg?"

Odin returned the smile, equally forced but grateful. "Come on, we are getting soaked," he said slipping his hand around Loki's waist to steer them toward his house. "There is one more thing that I need to speak to you about."

The rain was pounding down on them, making harsh noises over their leather jackets and making their shirts stick to their skin. Neither of them spoke all the way to Loki's understated home. The white stone and long, tall windows were half hidden in a forest of pine with Sigyn's garden trailing off to one side where the view spread over the rooftops of Asgard and all the way to the rivers bordering Midgard. The light was shimmering in long rectangles, reflecting over the wet stone and grass. Sigyn was awake, reading in her library. Loki took Odin to the side of the house, behind the trees into his workshop. It was burrowed into the ground, covered in moss and quite narrow. In fact, it was in all ways underwhelming. In his final few steps towards it, Loki made the hearth fire up and let himself and Odin inside. The interior was colourful, higgledy-piggledy and entirely incomprehensible to anybody but Loki. Much like his mind, he often thought.

Odin seated himself at the heavy, tortured oak table near the entrance to the room, caressing the wolf skins which covered its two benches. Loki went to the cupboard and rummaged until he found something appropriately alcoholic. He set two mismatched glasses in front of Odin and sat opposite.

"I apologize," Loki said, pouring the drinks. "I didn't mean to shout."

Odin shook his head, grey hair plastered over his face making it seem even more worn out. "Do not apologize to me for that. I realized long ago that all the sacrifices I had made are nothing in comparison to the ones I made you do." He gripped the glass. "Thank you."

"Skål," said Loki downing the drink.

"Gutår," said Odin doing the same and stretching his hand out for Loki to refill.

They sat there, taking a few more glasses, until they were warm and again in a good mood. The rain which had seemed so very oppressive only a moment ago was now a consoling shush. It brought out the smell of pine trees and Sigyn's herbs, and, combined with the familiar mystery of his work shop, made him once again feel at home where he was, because he was there, surrounded by things he knew.

"We have to get to the bottom of where these came from," Odin stated after the third or fourth drink. He nodded to his belt to indicate the tablets. "I will make some inquiries, but I would know why they were where they were."

"What do you want me to do?" Loki asked.  
"There are only several places I can think these came from. And one source suggests itself in particular." Odin cocked his head inviting Loki to make his guess.

Loki rolled his eyes. "I knew we would get to that one. Loki of the Utgardar. With whom I am most unhappy to share a name."

Odin looked at his own fingernails with an air of academic interest. "Is the name all? As I understand it he had always had a great love for your mother.

"Now, Grimnir, you really can't call a man a bastard in his own house," Loki commented.

Odin smiled, looking infinitely younger in the fire light, warmed by strong drink, and Loki could not help but return the smile. "Is it true she named you for him?"

"Probably," Loki admitted.

"Well, in any case,_ I_ cannot go to him," Odin concluded.  
"Oh, don't sell yourself short, my friend. He'd be happy to receive you," countered Loki.  
"I am sure. But then we would spend the rest of the evening in a pissing competition and get nowhere."  
"You think he doesn't ask me to whip mine out?" Loki elbowed the table and looked moodily into the Alfödr, contemplating the task proposed with a mixture of amusement and trepidation. "I would take Thor with me."  
"Why?"  
"Are you opposed?"  
"No," Odin shook his head. "I just want to know your reasoning."

"Loki has a terribly convoluted idea of what is funny and what is interesting. It's always good to give him something to play with if you want to get any sense out of him. He never gets so stubbornly spiteful as when he is bored."  
"Much like his namesake," Odin mumbled with a mischievous glint in his visible eye.

"Yes, thank you," Loki cut off that line of thought before it could flourish as more of Odin's rather dry and prickly sense of humour.

"But you are not thinking of taking Thor as backup?" Odin asked, suddenly serious again.

"No. Loki is older even than you, Alfödr. To think that Thor and I could in any way threaten him in his own realm is... beyond hubris. No, we will be good and obedient guests. I'm taking Thor purely for entertainment value."

"Hah!" Odin barked. "I wouldn't put it to him quite like that, but yes."

They shared another drink, then another, then Odin brought out his pouch of hemp leaf and they filled their pipes again, no longer talking of the tablets or the looming tasks ahead but of everyday things and memorable times. It was very late in the night indeed when Odin set out to return to his home and Loki went to lie beside his already sleeping wife, his mind lightened for the moment by drink and conversation.

* * *

NOTES:

Laufeyjarson: "Son of Laufey"; weirdly, Loki is only ever mentioned by the matronymic, as Laufey's son, and not the patronymic, as Farbauti's son.

Weordmyndum: "Mind's worth"; honour

Gapthrosnir: "One in gaping frenzy"; unflattering kenning for Odin

Hangatyr: "Hanging god"; marginally unflattering kenning for Odin; it is a reference to Odin having strung himself up from the World Tree, Yggdrasil, in order to attain knowledge.

Wolf's Father: quite an insulting kenning of Loki, except when Odin uses it; it is a reference to Fenrir. We'll get to him eventually.

_All the dramatic episodes and characters here are copyright of traditional Scandinavian and Icelandic tales, as found in the Poetic and Prose Edda, and some other sources. However, some are reinterpreted or changed slightly to suit my dark purpose. I encourage any of you who are interested in what the original story might have been, or how it pertains to what I have written here, to either ask me directly or research online._

_Having said that, it shouldn't matter too much whether or not you are an expert on Norse mythology or not; everything gets explained eventually. I hope._

_Except in some cases in which an alternate spelling is more common, I use John Lindow's guide to Norse mythology for names of people and places._


	4. Chapter 4

**Of Loki's Dream and the Cutting of Sif's Hair, part 1**

He woke up with a sigh. It was the dream again. That dream; the memory of a monstrous future. He did not wish to dwell on it but it remade itself nevertheless in front of his eyes, superimposed over his fingertips, over his wife's bare shoulder, over soft, dawn sunlight crawling across his bearskins. He had dreamed Ragnarök again, vivid and final, smelling of the yellow stone, tasting of soot, breathing fire. He heard his own son's screeching, felt the cold body of him coiling in the death throws as the world bent and buckled with him. And the fury. Helpless, abysmal.

Sigyn, still asleep, had shuffled away from him, shivering slightly. Loki concentrated on his breathing, slowing it down and quieting its raspy rage. Pictures and designs that had started to glow all over his body turned an inert black and then quickly faded altogether away. She must have recoiled from the malice and the magic, and from his skin which had become for a moment nothing as much as a layer of ice coating cold metal. He was warming now; warming at the sight of her. Loki picked up a handful of her hair and let it fall over his chest, soft and trickling. There was something alluring about her, something mysterious about her patience. She was not the most beautiful woman he'd ever bedded, nor the most uncompromising. She was not an everyday challenge to him. In fact, she went out of her way to please him, to be where he needed her. No matter what he did to her.

Perhaps he could not understand the devotion. Perhaps he was surprised by the persistent loyalty.

And perhaps he was confused that there was, in all the worlds, a person who would give so much to him, and still not become empty.

Oh, he loved her back. He supposed she knew it even better than he did himself. In mornings like this he could but wonder at the fact that this seemed enough to her, through his moods, his cruel jests, his sudden and senseless anger. Loki turned on his side to feel for Sigyn's hip. There it was, warm and round. He sought out the curve of her waist to press her against her chest. She murmured, silver-blond hair meshing between them like the fur of some precious creature.

"Wife," he whispered to her.

"Husband?" she said groggily.

"Look at me."

She did, turning to face him with heavy eyelids. He found her mouth with his fingers and felt her lips, dry from the sleep, then the warm interior. Her saliva glistened on his fingers. He tasted it and could feel her pressing against him, moulding herself as if she could melt into the rise of his knees behind hers.

"Do I make you happy, Sigyn?"

"Often," she breathed into his mouth.

"Often. Often I hurt you."

She paused to look at him, green eyes clasping onto his dark ones. "I do not love happiness, Loki. I did not marry happiness."

There is was, that mysterious stubborn calm. He slid fingers between her thighs just to make her close her eyes. She could burn him to a cinder with the depth of that gaze. She could make him small and helpless. And forgetful that there was a world outside of them; that there were other things besides her lazy smile, her slightly furrowed brow, the glint of her heaving chest. In his endless ignorance he could forever be stupid with joy.

He scooped her onto himself, raising her up until she fell forward against the heavy, carved headboard of their bed. The furs and covers piled around them. He kicked them impatiently away and slid underneath her until he could kiss her inner thighs while she kneeled above him. They'd once argued, Thor and he, whether a man was above this type of coupling. Thor had stopped short of calling it Erg, but just barely, out of respect for Loki. The issue was left unresolved, much due to the ample amount of mead that was being passed back and forth between them, but Loki believed that Thor was giving much up by opposing it. He made his tongue firm and enjoyed how Sigyn's thighs squeezed and released his shoulders as she strove to keep balance. It did not take her long to fall limply over him, smothering him. Loki laughed, turning her on her back and off of his face.

"You would kill me like this, woman?" he asked her, biting on her reddened nipples.

She smiled drowsily, extending hands to capture his head. "Between my legs, yes. But I would have you be exhausted. Not suffocated."

"Drowned," he commented. Sigyn punched him on the shoulder in response, and he smiled mischievously into a long kiss.

"Show me how you would kill me then, wife," he whispered but she was ahead of him, angling their bodies and thrusting hers up. He pushed down thinking that this was what his conservative friend was missing by standing on ceremony: the wildfire in her eyes, the greedy hunger in her mouth, faint red glowing beneath her skin, on her glistening neck, between her breasts. He lifted her head off the pillow and sat them both upright. Her feet sunk on either side of him and he could feel them tremble. He caught her waist to support her, scooped up her sweat-matted hair. She made grooves on his back with her nails, frenzied, beastlike, utterly his but somehow independent, owning him. He only realized that the world had sound when they fell backwards in the desperate clutch, and remained thus, stuck together and breathing hard. Neither of them spoke. Loki played with Sigyn's hair, drifting slowly away. Morning was as good a time as any to fall back to sleep and he decided to follow his wife into it. His eyes closed and his fingers stilled in her tangled hair. The next breath he drew in brought with it the sharp smell of bad eggs, like a pain in his sides. Loki's eyes snapped open. It was the smell of the yellow stone and the dream was starting again. Well not this time.

Loki disentangled himself from his wife who grumbled but remained sprawled the wrong way around on their bed, bargaining for more room. He smiled and kneeled next to her to plant a quick kiss on her buttock. She laughed through her nose and made a lazy move to swat him away. Obligingly, Loki collected his clothes and took his leave.

Unlike Thor or any other high-born house in Asgard, Loki preferred that he not trip over gossiping servants at every turn, and so he kept none. A wise choice if one was going to walk around butt naked, or decide that he would get really very drunk and cavort shamelessly with his wife in all crevices of the house. He enjoyed the privacy and the freedom. So what if somebody, Sigyn mostly, had to visit the hearths to stockpile them with wood, or prepare food, or check the lamps for oil. She did not complain.

Loki donned his trousers lazily and threw his shirt over his shoulder. He went to the kitchen for a drink of water and to wash himself. Sigyn's herbs, brought from all corners of the worlds, were hanging upside down to dry, or winking from their bottles of oil which drained them slowly of their power. It was a shame really that Sigyn could heal wounds, rob minds, bestow passion and create frenzy, yet most of the time she was asked to make abortifacients. Wild carrot and pennyroyal, common wormwood, beautiful vervain: they all served most of the time to rid the Asynja and Vana ladies of unwanted fruits of their labour. Oh, sure, there was also fennel, betony, and anise, and bittercress and plantain, and about three hundred others he couldn't name. But Loki could always tell which herbs were the most popular in which period, and in spring, after the long and rather boring winter during which there was, to be honest, nothing much else to do other than screw around, pennyroyal and the lot got what he liked to think of as the Lower Shelf of Prominence.

Sigyn kept her confidences well. He never knew who came and went through these walls to get what remedy. As Odin said, he could keep secrets, but perhaps not reign in his mischievous streak.

Loki scooped up a handful of some sort of nut from one of Sigyn's bowls but then thought better of it and let them trickle back down between his fingers. Maybe they had been set out there to go into biscuit dough, or maybe they were meant to make him go thinking in colours and singing with his feet. There was no way to know in Sigyn's kitchen.

He had seen humans use plants in this way – to make themselves insane, driven into a dancing frenzy, or a demented bloodlust. It was all to reach the gods they said, but as far as Loki could tell, if they did indeed reach any gods, they were none that he was acquainted with.

Except perhaps Utgarda-Loki. He was crazy enough to be on the receiving end of that type of unbridled, boundless outpour.

Privately, Loki thought that the people of Midgard, the lowly humans who nobody thought much about, were the most fascinating of all the creatures in their worlds. Elves, Jötnar, Vanir and Aesir all had their own type of magic. Some believed that only man, numerous but otherwise weak, had no magic apart from the one they stole, or were given, in bits and pieces; watered down and good only for their little, everyday needs. From what Loki had seen, he was not convinced of this dismissive view. Humans may have had no intrinsic magic of their own, and their efforts may not have been as powerful or impressive as the ones the other races could muster but they may have been more pervasive, more subtle and in the end more destructive. Because even for that little, everyday need they achieved with their watered down magic, the humans were willing to perish. He respected that sort of self-delusion. And stood well away from it.

Loki scavenged the kitchen for half a loaf of bread, a pitcher to fill with water and, to his great delight, wonderful, fresh goat cheese, still soaking in whey. He filched it all and stepped outside into the garden. The world was far too bright and a sharp pain in his eyes suddenly reminded him of the drink he'd shared with Odin. Frowning and trying to stare at the ground, Loki scrambled quickly to the dark sanctuary of pine trees and his workshop. It was stuffy, reeking of alcohol, pipe smoke and wet clothes that he'd shed there last night, turning his stomach like a cartwheel. Moaning, he cleared away the glasses and bottle still on the table, noting that it was all but empty, and hid it away in disgust. He kicked the clothes to the corner and then found himself standing in the middle of the little burrow, trying to remember what he wanted to do in there first. The front of the narrow room housed a small hearth, carved up and worn down oak table and many cupboards with rather random contents. Then the room dropped down a few steps to a mezzanine where Loki had a well lit table and a comfortable, fur-padded feather-filled cot surrounded by more random objects and the few texts and tablets he put any stock into owning. Finally, the level below that, this one completely sunk underground, was his torture chamber.

He'd realized when he'd built this place that it was a hard copy of the Svartalfar dwellings with its rather low ceilings and the narrow, single isle dropping down levels instead of branching rooms. He hadn't built it thus on purpose; certainly not because he particularly liked Dwarf décor. If anything, he much preferred Thrym's sense of space: the large windows that opened into a majestic view. Dwarf homes were low-ceilinged misery-holes but their layout was the only one that made sense if you wanted to keep a proper furnace. The giant, iron monster itself was interred beyond the far wall. Only its mouth was accessible from the lowest level of Loki's workshop. It heated three smaller kilns, one of which was glowing a gentle orange, as well as an enormous iron anvil, reinforced with Elfish magic.

Loki put his shirt on, then slid right out of it, throwing it onto the cot. There was no sense in wearing it if he meant to work. With the thick leather gloves tied all the way to his forearms, he took a pair of long iron throngs and opened the lid on his one working vertical kiln. It gonged against the wall with a satisfyingly heavy boom. Inside, the prize: an elbow-long clay tube, as thick as a man's hand, nestled among dying embers. It took him most of the winter to get this made. He pulled the clay tube out and brought it over to the iron moulding table. Its heat warmed his face. Holding it with a smaller pair of throngs, he picked up a heavy mallet and broke the layer of clay apart. The resulting soot and debris covered bar of something solid seemed underwhelming until Loki dunked it first into water, then oil and then took a piece of rough sheep skin to polish it.

"Thank fuck," he mumbled to himself as his work started becoming visible. Two thirds of the cylinder began shining like white gold beneath his sheep-skin cloth. The lower third was an opalescent sediment of green, silver and blood-red, the colours mixing together like three fierce dragons fighting in a murky, amber-tinted lake. The difficult bit of the job was done. It had taken him the whole winter of running the furnace all day, every day to get this thin tube of precious mineral. The work that went into it was perhaps an excessive amount of labour for a hobby, but it helped move along the boring months of short days. Besides, running the furnace heated the house nicely, or so he justified it to Sigyn who didn't appreciate the furnace's growling, humming and barking as it strained to churn out magic.

With his material now cool enough to handle with leather gloves, Loki chiselled away the see-through sediment and set it aside, contemplating the shining metal.

Yes, this was the difficult part of the job, the Svartalfar said: getting the material, boiling down the essence of what one wished to mould into an object. But Dwarves were master craftsmen, for all their faults. Loki was not. He was a much better alchemist than he was jeweller and so the coming task was what he truly dreaded. Sighing, he stoked the furnace fire and, while waiting for it to warm up sufficiently to once again heat the metal, he found the heavy milling stone somewhere in the corner of the mezzanine room. Grunting, he set it up into a faceting machine near the working table and started crumbling the thumb-sized piece of mineral until he had eighteen roughly even pieces. Every brittle piece hid away in its core a harder, more durable gem. He would have time to shape one or two before he had to go back to the furnace to adjust its heat.

Svartalfar were a funny bunch. It was very easy to dislike them. They were suspicious, inhospitable, always covered in soot and grime and desperately perverted. Loki enjoyed them immensely. The truth was that the Dwarves, as everybody referred to them except the Dwarves themselves, were a careful lot, perfectly aware that other peoples of the Nine Worlds, as well as other Dwarves, were always out to trick them into yielding their treasures or the secrets of their trade. Befriending them was long and arduous, and often fruitless. But once they let their guard down, they were delightful company. Easy to anger, but also easy to grant forgiveness, the Dwarves loved to laugh, to drink, to eat, to fuck and to show off their impressive abilities, their mastery of fire, earth and metal.

All together, Loki had spent many years in the company of Svartalfar, sometimes disguised, sometimes as himself. Most memorably, he had gone to steal the secrets of Brokk's brother, Eitri, and in doing so gained Mjölnir. Loki smiled, touching the tender flesh at the corner of his lips where Brokk had bound them with wire before Loki could fight his way out of their foundry. He still sported the scar, a reminder of Dark Elf fury.

As for Mjölnir, he had presented it to the then still very young Thor after Odin had placed upon it additional charms written in the Old Script, binding Mjölnir to Thor's will. Over the years, Loki had procured any number of Svartalfar objects for the people of Asgard, usually by way of apology.

Feeling the heat creep about his knees, Loki gave up faceting to adjust the temperature of the furnace. Then, very carefully, he installed a heavy iron frame onto hooks inside the furnace, and put the ladle with his two inches of new metal on top of it. It would be hours of working the bellows until he got the consistency he needed; the hair-thin threads he would bend into rings, shapes and chains.

The tiny room was now so stuffy he could barely breathe. Nevertheless, fresh air would undo all his good work. Time, heat and pressure; the Svartalfar would say that was all it took to create anything at all. Time, heat and pressure. Right.

Sweat stinging his eyes, Loki thought of the time he went down to the sons of Ivaldi, long after Ivaldi's death, to beg from them the oddest of all the objects they had ever made: hair for Sif.

Ivaldi had been an old and skilful forger who had, grumbling and complaining, taught Loki what little he now knew of the art, and who would have even now barked nasty comments at him for pushing the bellows too quickly, or not stoking the fire evenly. Ivaldi's sons were every bit as brilliant as their father had been, if much more pleasant company all around. So when he came to them and asked for golden threads so fine they could be combed, Ivaldi's sons indulged him under the condition that he would tell them what he wanted them for. Loki told them that he'd cut off Sif's hair as a joke, and now Thor was at his throat to give his wife a woman's dignity until it grew back.

This wasn't untrue. It was just not the whole story, for none of Ivaldi's sons thought to ask why he'd hacked Sif's hair off in the first place.

* * *

Erg (n.) and Argr (adj.): insults meaning "that which is not worth a man (of honour)", meaning anything from sexual intercourse which puts the man in the weaker position, to seid, the female art of prophecy.

_All the dramatic episodes and characters here are copyright of traditional Scandinavian and Icelandic tales, as found in the Poetic and Prose Edda, and some other sources. However, some are reinterpreted or changed slightly to suit my dark purpose. I encourage any of you who are interested in what the original story might have been, or how it pertains to what I have written here, to either ask me directly or research online._

_Having said that, it shouldn't matter too much whether or not you are an expert on Norse mythology or not; everything gets explained eventually. I hope._

_Except in some cases in which an alternate spelling is more common, I use John Lindow's guide to Norse mythology for names of people and places._


	5. Chapter 5

**Of Loki's Dream and the Cutting of Sif's Hair, part 2**

It was a cold day, a very long time ago. Loki was sitting in the steamy bathhouse, uncharacteristically alone. He had been in a strange mood that day and couldn't quite remember why. Whatever the case, in the hot log house smelling of birch and oils he let the designs show: the pictures of his life echoed all over his body, a thing particular to Jötnar. The pictures grew more intricate with age and experience, appearing sometimes as nothing more than brown shadows, sometimes as glowing, icy light shining just beneath the skin. An older generation of Jötnar sometimes flaunted them proudly, letting the pictures tell of their lives and their magic. But people with rich lives and wisdom were rare these days and the display had grown out of favour.

As for Loki, who did have a rich life: he did not like to show them even when it had been in favour. Anyone who knew how to interpret the pictures, ever changing, or read the writings accompanying them, would learn far too much about him. But even more than that, they made him cold and hard and sinister. After all, the only times that the designs came out without the will of the one bearing them were when they were almost completely out of their senses. Like when they were in a killing rage.

Nevertheless, on that day, in his strange mood, Loki took swigs of wormwood brandy and looked at the designs. He could see his children when they were still very young, his first wife holding their daughter on the forearm of his left hand. On the thigh, the story of Sleipnir and the building of the Wall; elsewhere, his acquisition of Gungnir, of Skadbladnir and Gullinbursti, and many other things. They moved in a continuous telling of his exploits, while he successfully avoided looking at those he did not wish to contemplate.

"What is that?" he heard a voice at the entrance to the bathhouse. Even as he looked up he made the designs disappear, like breathing out. It was Sif draped in a simple dark blue gown, standing in the doorway with a suspicious look on her face.

"My magic," he said.

"Oh," she mouthed, dismissing what she had little interest in. "I was looking for my husband."

"I haven't seen him," Loki answered and Sif turned to go. "Don't go," he told her.

"What is there to stay for?"

"I would have someone to share conversation with. And something to look at in this room."

Sif smirked and shook her pretty head of braided golden hair. "Something to look at, Laufeyjarson? I think not."  
Loki laughed. "I mean nothing ill, Sif. Lay in the steam with me. Share my drink. Tell me about the world." He stretched his arm out to offer his demijohn of wormwood brandy. After a few moments of doubt, Sif walked over but did not sit down. The steam made her dress stick to her curves wonderfully.

"What about the world?" she asked, taking a sip and making a face.

"Anything. Everything. The little things. Show me how you see it," he told her and sat back to emphasize how entirely unintimidating he was.

"Why would you want to know that?" Sif said, relenting and sitting down on the bench opposite him. Loki wondered how long she would last in this heat with the dress on and the hair folded around her head in such a complicated way. He dearly wanted to see her hair let loose.

"Because we are different, Goldhead. I would know a different world."  
"We inhabit the same one. And you've probably seen more of it than I have."

"Why do you say that?" Loki said taking a drink and passing it on to her again.

Sif took a measured gulp and promptly gave the bottle back. "Well haven't you?"  
"Perhaps. But you may come and go as you please, just like me."  
"I may," she agreed.

"And where would you go?"

Sif hesitated, one hand going up to scratch her sweating forehead, then the braid above her right ear. "Midgard," she said finally.

"But you've been there many times, surely," Loki said, having no trouble infusing his voice with surprise.

"Only as myself," Sif said, watching him closely. "I would travel in disguise."  
"As what?" he asked.

Sif laughed. "As _what_, Shapeshifter? Not all of us can change thus at will."

"If you could?" Loki allowed. He drank while she thought.

"A bird," Sif finally said her heart shaped face inclined to one side and ponderous.

"A hawk," said Loki passing the demijohn to her.

"You make fun of me," Sif said and drank some more, but modestly.

"Not at all. I can see you as a hawk. Proud and magnificent," he said lightly.

"Flattery will get you nowhere," Sif commented. She couldn't help herself anymore and carefully started unbraiding her hair. "Your silver tongue will not work on me."  
"Why not let my tongue work, pretty Sif?" he asked with an outright leer, bending over to pass more of the drink to her.

Sif snickered and rolled her eyes, half her hair loose and pooling into her lap. "You are incorrigible swine, and I would rather fuck a bear."  
"A bear?" wondered Loki. "I am gentler than a bear."  
"You would know, wouldn't you? You've screwed just about everything."  
"You are not easily seduced, are you, virtuous wife?" he sneered at her then turned immediately back to his conversational tone. "So you would fly, Goldhead? I can make you a bird."

"I would not ask you to. And I would not accept should you offer," Sif said categorically, wiping her mouth after another sip of brandy.

Loki took the proffered bottle and set it between his knees, frowning slightly. "Then I will not offer. But I would ask why. You distrust my abilities or my character?

"I know you are capable but I also know you are false," Sif said leaning forward to match his posture, like a man negotiating. The mist had thinned between them and Loki could see the red in her face, the glinting moisture of her lips, the outline of her nipples and the shine of her matted hair.

"You also know I mend that which I break," Loki said. "You know it is not malice which drives me."

"Do I know it?" she said, raising her eyebrows. "I know you are sometimes cruel for no reason but your own entertainment."

Loki made a swatting motion with his hand. "It's one thing to have reserves about my ideas of fun, another not to trust my deepest heart. You wound me, pretty Sif."

"Heart, Skywalker?" she laughed and reached for the demijohn. Loki handed it over. Their fingers met over the bottle neck and Sif's smile faltered briefly. "I did not know you to be burdened by such. How should I know its deepest regions?"  
"I could show you," Loki suggested.

"Show me your heart? I think what you would show me is further down."  
He snickered. "They are inextricable one from the other. But you must know I love your husband with that deepest heart."  
Sif considered the statement. "Yes. Yes, that I can believe."  
Loki let his eyebrows climb up on his forehead. "What? No quip at the end? I was waiting for you to turn the words against me."  
"I was not going to. Thor loves you dearly too."

"Not as much as you."  
Sif made a complicated face, somewhere between sadness, amusement and annoyance, and took a long swig of Loki's drink. "I doubt that sometime. Often I feel he much rather spends time in your company instead of mine."  
"Impossible!" Loki exclaimed. "I never fuck him."  
Sif laughed for the first time that day without a trace of irony or reserve. It lit her face like the dawn. "You are as crude as he is."

"Yet somehow endearing?" Loki suggested.

"Oh, I know you can be when you try," Sif said giving the bottle back.

"I am trying very hard now," he commented, took a long drink and licked his lips, tasting the bitter alcohol, and tasting her. "Here, drink!"

"Why? So you could have your way with me?" Sif chided but accepted the bottle.

"Tell me, what do you imagine I would do to you if I had my way?" Loki asked putting his legs up on the bench next to Sif and reclining backwards. Over the bottle, Sif stared at his body before she caught herself. Loki leered more.

"Hmm, you blush, daughter of Asgard? Do you imagine I would force you to the floor and take you?" he asked in a low voice.

"Thor would have your heart for it," Sif retorted.

"He would," Loki nodded. "I would give it to him."  
She stared into his face a bit more, sucking lightly on her lower lip. "No, I imagine you would talk me down until I came to you."

"What else do you imagine?"

"Stop this," she demanded but there was little conviction in her voice.

Loki slid off the bench and onto the floor to sit by Sif's legs. "I would never force you. A woman must be free in order to be beautiful. And you are so free, Sif."

"Not that free," she said, blue eyes round and huge.

"How free then?" Loki asked, inclining his head to one side innocently. "Free enough for one kiss?"

Sif stared down into his face, fighting between what she wanted to do and what she did not want to do, both of which were rather inconsiderately condensed into the same action. "One kiss, Loki?" she asked.

"It will have to be enough," he said rising to meet her lips.

She was hesitant, and so he let her hesitate, girlish lips fluttering around his mouth until they opened and stayed that way, inviting and responsive.

"I said one kiss," she mumbled after a while.

"This is still the same kiss," Loki breathed with a smirk.

"Is it now?"

"Until you pull away, Goldhead."

Sif's eyebrows furrowed. "I do not want to."

"Then what do you want to do?" he asked her and felt her little hands over his chest, scratching his ribs until she'd manoeuvred him right in front of herself, her knees on either side of him.

"Tell me what you imagine you'd do to me if you had your way," she had demanded.

Working the bellows, Loki found his smile was very wide while he remembered Sif's little body wrapped around his, tender nipples hard enough to bruise. But she was just like he imagined her: ripe and soft, like a peach dripping with juice. He had wanted her for a long time. It was her beguiling naïveté standing shoulder to shoulder with her overflowing self-confidence. It was the way she was penetrating and innocent at the same time; cruel and vulnerable. He had made libertine, half-meant advances on her quite a few times before that, sometimes in front of Thor who grunted and took it as a joke at his expense. She always retorted with wit, certain she would never give in.

But everybody gave in to everything eventually. Time, heat and pressure – that was all it took.

And so Sif, the stubborn girl-woman who had never been unfaithful to her husband, and to Loki's knowledge, had never been since, faltered and let him do whatever he wanted for those two hours in the bathhouse. But never again.

Even though he started poking fun at Thor after that, endlessly suggesting he had slept with his wife, Loki never did it in front of Sif, and they never again had another flirtatious exchange. But he cut off her hair not because she declined to come to him again, but because of what she did after they were done. Because she gathered her clothes to her chest and hissed at him, "My husband will not know."

Loki nodded, "I will not tell him."

"You will tell nobody," ordered Sif, pulling her robe around herself.

"I will not," Loki nodded slowly. "But I will think about it from time to time. And so will you."  
"I will not," she said poisonously. "I will not. And it will never happen again, Wolf's Father."

It was the way she'd said it, with feeling and the purest contempt, that made his lips go up in a humourless, cruel smile. He walked over to where she stood, adamant not to show that she flinched, and he whispered back at her, "As you say. None will know how you drank my drink," he nodded to his demijohn. "And then I drank yours," he nodded towards her thighs. "And how you then drank mine again."  
Her face was a perfect red, like an angry sunset and he only smiled wider. "But I will know it, Sif. And so will you."

Silent for a long time, she finally spoke in a strangled voice, "And you ask me why I distrust you?"

"I ask why you despise me," he said.

Sif ground her teeth, made a knot to tie her soaked dress and, turning back to look at him once at the door, added enigmatically, "You make me weak. You make us all weak."

And so it was that two or three days after that he snuck into the garden of Bilskirnir where Sif lay asleep and sheared off her hair, every last strand of it, until she looked nothing like herself.

When Thor found Sif in a hysterical rage and demanded the reason, she accused Loki. For some reason he could not understand himself, he did not lie when Thor asked whether it had been him, but he did lie when Thor asked to know why. After all, his vengeance and his anger was with Sif, not Thor, and jabs notwithstanding, Loki would never hurt him by telling him he'd had his wife. No, as he'd promised Sif, he would tell no one, but he would think about it sometimes.

As for the hair cutting, Loki was willing to admit that he may have overreacted a bit. And so he went down to Ivaldi's sons and bid them make a golden wig for Sif.

Thor forgave him after that, chalking the incident down to one of Loki's infamous Moods.

Sif… well, she had recently started to forgive him, or at least to put it aside.

Breathing hard, Loki stopped pushing the bellows. It should be at the right consistency. This was the moment of truth. Or at least the moment of experimental jewellery.

He took the ladle out and brought it over to the working table. The metal smelled nothing like molten iron or gold: it smelled of spring flowers, of a gentle, warm earth, of young leaves, green, aromatic fruit and of the purest, clearest rain. It smelled of these things because it was made of them as were the gems he had been forming on the faceting machine.

He poured a portion of the material into the mould he'd made. The rest he started pinching and twirling almost like glass, over and over again until he could make it into thin, flat wire. It was pain-staking work. He wasn't as bad as he'd dreaded he would be, not as good as he'd hoped. But for a first try, even Ivaldi would have had to contend it wasn't an entirely poor effort.

"You stole my cheese," Sigyn told him.

After hours of endless metal work, Loki had moved his faceting machine outside into the light and out of the smoked up, stunk up, searing interior of the workshop. He sat in the shade of his pines, bent over the milling stone, shirtless, filthy, matted hair bunched up into what resembled a bird's nest on the back of his neck. His wife observed him with exasperation.

"Hrn?" he inquired.

Sigyn walked over with something that smelled very nice bundled in a cloth held in front of her chest and, bless her, a pitcher of light beer in the other hand. Suddenly ravenously hungry, Loki honed in on the meal like a hungry wolf.

"The goat cheese. I was going to use it," his wife said.  
"Oh," said Loki trying to look contrite.

Sigyn shook her head and dragged one of the wood stools over. "Spinach pie, with _borrowed_ cheese, and beer," she announced and placed them on the stool.

"Mhm," said Loki, blowing onto the surface of a droplet of red-and-amber stone he'd been polishing. The little gem was warm to the touch and smelled of apricots, currants and cantaloupe. He smiled in satisfaction. At least Ivaldi could not complain about his abilities as an alchemist.

"What are you making?" Sigyn inquired, looking over his shoulder, for the moment mesmerized by the little gem.

"A necklace. Or at least I think I am. We'll see how it comes out."

"It's lovely."

"You want it?" Loki asked, looking at his wife.

"You are not making it for me," Sigyn shook her head. "So don't offer it to me."

"I am making it for Hel," Loki said, and then frowned at himself for having said it.

Sigyn raised her eyebrows. "Then work hard. Leave you to it."

"You don't mind?" he asked suddenly.

Sigyn observed him, gauging his meaning. "Of course not. Why would I?"

Loki caught her wrist and looked at it. She was pale and fair, even by Vanir standards. Her skin turned red where he touched her, and he could feel the living tendon and blue veins underneath, so delicate was it. Although it had nothing to do with his ultimate attraction to Sigyn, Loki sometimes thought that it was an odd thing he had to come to Asgard to become sensitive to the Jötunn appreciation of what was milky-skinned and silver-haired. Or perhaps it made perfect sense.

"I'll make a bracelet for you," he murmured, half to himself. "Out of winter."

Sigyn looked down on her wrist as if trying to imagine a bracelet made of ice. "Won't it be cold?"  
"I won't make it freezing. A calm, steady, soothing winter of compassion."

She smiled and planted a kiss on the top of his head, then one on his lips. "Wash before you go come into the house. You stink," she mumbled to him. "Husband."

He let go of her wrist and observed her as she went back to the kitchen, scrutinizing her herb garden on the way. He rarely spoke to her about his other children as of late, and when he did it was only in a few sketchy sentences. He was not sure why. It was ridiculous. Sigyn knew everything: every ache, every fear, every regret; even more than he told her. Somehow he felt as if they were of a different world than Sigyn and Narvi, and had to be kept that way otherwise the two forces would annihilate each other. It was a gut feeling, nothing intellectual. Polishing the final stone, Loki wondered if that was how the Aesir felt about him. Except, they could not keep him away; he was constantly in their lives, threatening to blow all of them up. He had strenuously objected when Odin decided they should make some of the things he'd seen in Mimir's well known to the other dwellers of Asgard, those things which had to do with their fates. In most cases, their deaths. Odin had said it would gain their cooperation, and not create a panic, or worse, a bloodlust as Loki had first expected. And so Odin told his eldest child that his best friend's second son would kill him.

He frowned. This was exactly what he would not think about. The reason he started making this necklace was not to think about these things. Yet he had now come to the limit of what he could do in one day. The moulding metal had to harden, the woven rings settle, the gems breathe.

Moodily, Loki sat in the afternoon sun and ate his meal. Odin had said he would make a few inquiries before he sent out Loki with Thor to see what sense, if any, they could extract out of the Lord of the Utgardar.

He had probably spoken the truth when he'd told Odin that the only thing they shared was the name. As far as he knew, his mother had conceived all of her three sons by her husband. Whether or not she had given her youngest the name of a man who had always been a friend, and perhaps at one time or another, a lover, he could not say for certain. The only thing he knew was that he felt an as of yet vague, murky unease, like the outline of a ship in low cloud; a foreboding he had felt ever since those damned tablets fell out of Thrym's mother's dress. Loki had learned over the years to trust his gut instinct because it seemed that there was a smarter man living inside everyone's head, who saw and heard everything, but sadly could not speak. He could only give hints by creating a dull, thudding pain in one's stomach, or putting stones into one's chest. And Loki's chest felt so heavy.

He saw a figure approaching, breathing heavily on the steep path to his house. It held onto one of the two stone idols who stood guard at the top of the staircase. Sigyn had buried them there thinking they were cute. Only Loki knew that they were two particularly nasty Dwarves he'd tricked and turned to stone.

Loki let his lips rise observing the little figure. It was Thjalfi, who Thor had brought with him from a trip to Midgard, along with his sister Roskva. Both were in Thor's service, although Loki was not entirely sure what they did there. It seemed that Thjalfi's job was to bicker with Thor and then eventually do as his master asked, and Roskva's job was to step on Thjalfi's foot if the boy toed the line too closely.

Thjalfi finally caught his breath, glanced back to the climb he'd had to make, said something profane and then looked around until he saw Loki, soot-covered and trying to enjoy his beer.

"Master Skywalker," Thjalfi called. "May I?"

"Come here, little rabbit," Loki said to him, happy to have somebody to distract him.

Thjalfi scuttled over to Loki's position in the shade and fell heavily onto a bench at the side of the house. "Master Skywalker?"  
"Yes, Thjalfi?"

"Do you live on top of this fucking mountain just to make my life miserable?"

"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" Loki chuckled. "Beer?"

Thjalfi took the pitcher Loki offered and downed three healthy gulps. Wordlessly, Loki pushed the last bit of Sigyn's spinach pastry over to Thjalfi to see it disappear very quickly into the boy's mouth. Loki narrowed his eyes in a private joke with himself. He still thought of Thjalfi as a boy yet Thjalfi, with his trimmed beard and two or three strands of white in his swept back hair, was starting to look older than Loki. Loki, who was several hundred times his age. What a strange life the little humans had. Brief and merciless, always on the very verge of burning out, like a candle in the doorway.

"And what brings you to my mountain?" asked Loki with a deliberate smile.

"Thor, my master," Thjalfi said with a self-important tone even though Thor's title was clearly an afterthought, "Would hold a feast in his mead hall. He's sent me to invite you." The pompous tone died away abruptly. "You and everybody else in this damned place. I've been making rounds since the morning."  
"Me and _everybody_? Sweet mother of mercy. What, Thor didn't get enough finger fucking when he was a woman so he wants more chaos?" Loki sighed.

"Appears so," Thjalfi said with the stiff, bloated face of a man who was aware he mustn't laugh. "How was he as a woman, Master Skywalker?"

"Better looking than as a man, little rabbit. But not by much. Or are you asking me how was he to fuck?"

Thjalfi cocked his eyebrow, daring Loki to take the joke further. Loki laughed and ruffled Thjalfi's dark brown hair. "Still terrible, I would think. Good thing we didn't marry him off. Now go to Bilskirnir and tell the Goat Master I'll be there."

Thjalfi sighed and got up on his feet again. He stretched his back and took in the view, expression distant. "Can you see Midgard from up here, Master Skywalker?"  
"Not from here, little rabbit."  
"Oh," said Thjalfi.

"Are you homesick, little rabbit?"  
"Are you not?"

Loki breathed a surprised laugh, not sure what the boy meant. "What is home, Thjalfi, son of Who-knows-who?"

Thjalfi shrugged. "The place where, no matter what you did, whenever you go there, they have to let you in. That's home, Loki, son of Who-knows-what."

And with that, little Thjalfi, fragile Thjalfi who was getting older every day, went back down the hill towards Asgard, leaving the Trickster God to ponder whether or not he was homesick. Or indeed could be homesick at all.

* * *

In order, Gungnir: Odin's spear; Skadbladnir: Frey's folding ship and, Gullinbursti, his boar (also known as Slidrugtanni).

Bilskirnir: Thor's palace in Asgard where he lives with Sif.

_All the dramatic episodes and characters here are copyright of traditional Scandinavian and Icelandic tales, as found in the Poetic and Prose Edda, and some other sources. However, some are reinterpreted or changed slightly to suit my dark purpose. I encourage any of you who are interested in what the original story might have been, or how it pertains to what I have written here, to either ask me directly or research online._

_Having said that, it shouldn't matter too much whether or not you are an expert on Norse mythology or not; everything gets explained eventually. I hope._

_Except in some cases in which an alternate spelling is more common, I use John Lindow's guide to Norse mythology for names of people and places._


	6. Chapter 6

**Of Thor's Piss Up**

Morning was creeping over the east like a silver glint of an enemy's weapon. Loki squinted at it, hating it with every fibre of his being. A dangerous headache was putting pressure onto his eyes, as if it was trying to push them out of his skull. Oh, the hangover will be epic, he could tell.

"I can't feel my face," he heard Bragi grumble, sprawled on the bearskin he'd dragged in from another room at some point during the evening.

Promptly, a slender hand covered his face.

"I can feel your face," Baldur stated.

Loki, lying on the table, turned his head away from the morning. He was met with the end of a pipe, offered to him by Frey who was still insidiously vertical and sitting on a bench surrounded by Thor's tables that had been all rounded up onto one pile in a stroke of drunken brilliance. Loki took the pipe, wondering at its strange tortoiseshell body. There was no place to store the burning leaf into. Instead it was a long hollow tube with what should have been the pipe-bowl mounted about four fifths of the way down, a narrow mouth at its tip containing what looked to Loki to be a bit of rolled up black snot.

"That's the last of it," murmured Frey bringing a tubular oil lamp up against the pipe-bowl.

Loki inhaled obediently. The black snot frizzled. He felt a great spurt of dizziness and his mouth tasted like he'd gone head first into flowers and freshly dug up earth. He held his breath until he thought he might pass out and finally exhaled in a violent coughing fit. "Where'd you get this?"

"Skirnir brought it," Frey said staring into the bit of black snot.

"That little piss is trying to poison you, mate," Loki commented clearing his throat in an effort to settle his ragged breathing.

"Old Vana make it from poppy," Frey said dreamily. "But if you girls can't handle it…"

"I can feel my face now. But it's melting," Bragi put in conversationally.

"Thor? Hey, Thor? You awake?" Baldur, sprawled on the bench opposite Frey, said and started poking the lifeless Thor whose head was nestled between his hands on the table.  
"You alive?" Frey inquired.

Thor looked up, eyes bloodshot but with a strangely serene expression on his face. "Can you smell apples? It's everywhere but it sounds so much better."

"Cinnamon," Baldur commented, playing an association game with himself.

Loki thought very hard about getting up but even with the best will it was coming to nothing. Apparently, he had to give a little bit more time for the Vana snot to wash out of his system. "What time is it?"

"What is it, time?" Bragi retorted.

"Get a grip on yourself," someone said.

"It's not morning yet," Baldur replied, strangely the only one paying attention.

Loki frowned. With some effort he convinced his left hand to make pointed gestures toward Thor's tall windows which were becoming by the moment brighter and brighter. "So what's that, then, a fucking, fucking…" but he couldn't think of a single sufficiently sardonic metaphor for morning. "What's big and shiny?"

Frey chuckled. "You got somewhere to be?"

"Got something in the furnace," Loki answered and yawned.

Bragi made a shuffling sound, trying to prop himself onto his elbows and surreptitiously giving up. "You make the food in your house?"

"No, you fuckwad," said Frey. "He means the forge."

"You make food in the forge?"

"Nah. It's that huge thing underneath the house." It was Thor who spoke, head resting heavily on one arm. "For metal work."

"What huge thing?" Baldur wanted to know.

"That's right, you've never been to Loki's place," Thor said, more or less to himself.

"He's got a Svartalfar workshop under the side of the house," Frey explained while Loki tried to remember when he'd ever told or shown Frey his workshop.

"What'd you do in there?" Baldur asked managing to sit up and look at Loki's profile.

"The fuck would you do in a workshop?" snickered Loki. "I work."

"He's never heard of the thing. Baldur stands around and looks pretty," Frey, the chieftain of all Vanir, commented somewhat bitterly while rummaging the litter around Bragi to find a comparatively clean cup. He filled it with ale and proceeded making dubious faces at it.

"Yeah, wait, that's right!" Thor said with an air of enlightenment. He caught Loki's ankle and shook it mercilessly. "Why didn't you switch _him_ into a woman?"

"Baldur?" asked Loki and Frey simultaneously.

"Because I'm not the idiot who lost the hammer," Baldur retorted categorically.

"Because if Baldur were a woman, I'd fucking marry him," Loki said trying to shake Thor's hand off of his foot.

Baldur made a funny little bow in Loki's direction "Thank you, thank you."

"So switch him now."

At Bragi's suggestion there was a brief silence before the group exploded in half-mumbled comments and requests.

"Not even hypo-fucking-thetically," Baldur managed to say in his clearest voice.

"Why not, should be fun!"

"Yeah, change him!"

"I'd pay to see it," Thor said. "Loki?"

"Piss off," Baldur interjected.

Loki managed to find Baldur's wavy locks with his hand. "That's right, you're pretty enough as it is, baby."

Still giggling to himself, Thor said, "Speaking of, where's the ugly brother?"

"Gone to sleep, and don't call him that," Baldur retorted aiming a kick at Thor's thigh. Loki smirked. It was unfair, not to mention hypocritical, of Thor to call Höd the ugly brother. Compared to Baldur, just about everybody was ugly.

As if reading his mind, Frey went on to comment, "Besides look who's talking. You're not much of a heartthrob as a man, and as a woman…"

"I did the best I fucking could," Loki grumbled.

"What was he like as a woman?" Bragi asked.

"Can we drop this?" Thor put in weakly.

Loki laughed, thinking of Thjalfi asking him that same question. "He was a hellcat in bed."

"The fu-, would you stop saying weird shit like that?" Thor protested poking Loki's ankle painfully.

"It was a compliment, milady," Loki retorted and, finally able to move his body after that last hit from the pipe, retracted his feet away from Thor's grubby hands. He also managed to rotate onto his hip and away from the looming sunrise to observe the circle of men, tables, benches, leftovers and alcohol.

"Who would be a hellcat in bed?" Bragi wondered from his central position on the floor.

"As a woman?" Frey asked, wiping his mouth after a drink of mead. "Loki."

"Yeah, and you'd wake up without your cock," Thor snort-laughed and, finding Loki's ankles out of his reach, grabbed a random pitcher, gobbling its contents down.

Loki, his funny bone tickled, couldn't resist. "I still keep yours in a jar on my nightstand."

"No, I mean of women-women," Bragi put in before Loki and Thor could scoff at each other any further.

"Idunn not up for it?" Frey leered.

Baldur guffawed. "The bachelor speaks. You can't marry a hellcat, Yngvi, you twat."

"His dad did," Loki snickered.

"Yeah, Skadi would be a hellcat," Bragi said dreamily. Loki decided not to get into what Skadi would or would not be.

"You married two, the fuck are you talking about, Shapeshifter?" Thor said with a sheepish smirk on his face.

"Who did?" Bragi inquired.

"Loki!"

"Sigyn is a hellcat?"

"No," Loki said to Bragi sparing a nasty look for Thor. "He's just trying to get me to talk about my first wife. Having said that, you did the worst thing there is and married a cock-tease, so I don't see what you're so fucking smug about."

"Oh, he's right!" Frey laughed. "I remember when Sif kept you in the doghouse, you remember?"

Baldur nodded confirmation. "Oh, yeah, why was that?"  
"Because he forgave me too easily," Loki answered before Thor could think to deny the whole thing. "For the hair incident. And because he fucked off to Midgard for a month and didn't tell her about it."

"Yeah, it's all your fault come to think of it," Thor said moodily.

"You know who would be a hellcat?" Bragi continued his own line of thought, nodding pointedly at Frey. "Your sister."

"Well she is," Loki said offhandedly only to be met with a heavy silence. "Oh, come on, everybody's slept with Freya!"

"I didn't," Bragi shrugged only to find his statement too was met with a burdened hush.

Frey only shook his head of caramel-coloured hair, much darker than his sister's, and sighed with resignation, "Look, let's keep my sister out of this conversation."

"Wait, wait. I didn't sleep with Freya! You did?" Bragi pursued his point, up on his elbows and looking to Baldur.

Baldur looked from Frey to Loki to Bragi and back to Frey with the expression of a man who truly wished he was a better liar. "I… I mean, yes, but… it wasn't like… that," he managed to squeeze out, his large, hazel-coloured eyes trapped and pleading.

"Bragi may be my only friend in the world…" Frey said, tasting the words in his mouth and not liking what he tasted.

"What, really?" Bragi went on in honest disbelief. "And you?"

Caught, Thor made a face similar to his younger brother's and squeezed out, "…only the once."

"Yeah, the once when we did together," Loki put in, enjoying immensely the way colour drained from Thor's face like somebody sucked it out of him.

"What?" Bragi and Baldur inquired together.

"Yeah, never mind that," Frey tried for some damage control only to be outshouted by a now completely outraged Bragi. "Why didn't I sleep with her?"

"You're not her type," Loki commented, contorting painfully to find an itch just below his shoulder bone.

Bragi wouldn't accept it. "Seems to me like everybody's her type."

Frey drew a very complex series of figures with his hands in the air. "It's not like that! Freya just…"

"Likes to fuck?" Thor suggested, uncharacteristically tart.

"It's her way of being friendly," Frey managed.

"Wait, wait, so she doesn't like me at all?" Bragi was now fully sitting up, although obviously suffering room spin for he bobbed on his own axis as if her were a buoy in the harbour. "I mean, if she doesn't even think of me as a friend…"

"I'm sure Freya likes you fine," Baldur couldn't help but try to be comforting.

"Then I want to sleep with her too! I mean if everybody's doing it… She's not even technically married!"

"She is technically married," Thor said. "Just not… practically."

"Can we stop talking about my sister, seriously?" Frey said, steering the conversation in a different direction with quite some force but Loki found himself reminiscing on Thor's comment.

It was years ago and he hadn't thought about it for so long it had almost faded from memory, but if he closed his eyes now Loki could see the picture of Freya, standing in his workshop, looking wild with wind-blown hair, mud caked on the hem of her dress. He was telling her, "Freya, he would remain hidden to those who seek him. That is the essence of this enchantment. There is no way to find him by looking for him."

"But there has to be a way…" Freya implored. Her voice was not the usual jingle of silvery, girlish laughter but something ragged and hoarse Loki had never heard coming from her throat before.

"Not that I know of." He observed her tortured face, her long-fingered, narrow hands, white knuckled around the glass of brandy he'd given her and said, careful to pronounce every word, "Vanadys, tell me truthfully and think before you do. Is this not that you just lost a toy that you thought could not be lost and you are angry at yourself?"

Freya's face was for a second an image of perfect shock, as if he'd struck her bodily but then started to become unnaturally still, settling in an expression of dark determination. She was freezing before his very eyes, hardening into a stone idol of herself.

"Do you not love your wife, Loki?" Freya asked.

"I love her," Loki breathed, fascinated, hypnotized by the change.

"And do you not sometimes mistreat her?" asked this sculpture with Freya's face.

Loki nodded slowly. "I do. Much more often than she deserves."

"And would you not bring down the skies to get her back if she were lost to you?"

"You've made your point," he nodded again, understanding her, needing her to thaw back into a semblance of how he knew her.

"Would you not?" Freya growled.

"I would."

"So how dare you tell me that I've lost a toy?" she hissed.

"Freya," he said, careful to keep his voice calm. He reached out and she took his hand. He was surprised that she was warm, that she felt at all alive.

"Fierce Freya," Loki whispered, planting a quick kiss onto her wrist. "I will… keep an eye out for him. And if I see him I will tell him what you've spoken to me."

He never did see Odur, the husband that was lost to the Vanadys, the most beautiful of all women, Spring itself. In time, Freya went back to her usual charming self: coquettish, delectable and so endearingly vain. But his promise to her was not forgotten, nor was the lesson he had learned that day – that in truth he knew nothing of Vanir magic and that behind the smiling, friendly faces of Freya and her brother, so smooth, young and even childish among the military-minded Aesir, there lay hidden the rage of all nature.

"Where are you?" he heard Thor's voice next to his ear.

"Hm?" Loki jerked awake, raising his eyebrows at his friend.

"You drifted away," said Thor, extending his hand for Loki to finally sit up. They stayed that way – Thor standing at the foot of his jumbled tables, Loki sitting on one of them, observing the almighty shuffle as Frey fretted over Baldur, who had obviously fallen into a deep sleep at some point, trying to get the man's lifeless arm over his shoulder.

"Bragi, help me get Baldur home," Frey asked. Bragi, who had been attaching his belt and dagger, clambered over the tables to assist. With some help from Thor and absolutely no help from Loki, the two of them managed to get a grip on Baldur's limp body, a slightly troubled, half-conscious expression on his young face. Bragi and Frey made their exit, nodding thanks to the hall-master. For some reason, Loki couldn't keep his eyes off the way Baldur looked in their hands. Like a spent ragdoll. There was something ominous about his head falling backwards, slipping from Frey's hands and Loki remembered that it was Baldur's dream that had prompted the Alfödr to seek wisdom in Mimir's well.

Loki shook his head, provoking the hangover to start in earnest. "Oh," he grunted squinting to look at Thor who was bathed in the morning's silver light which now occupied the whole of the heavens.

Thor observed his empty mead hall, an exasperated look on his face, kicking a broken jug over with his foot before seating himself on the bench next to Loki's feet. "Are you going too?" he asked.

"If you want me to."

"Nah, stick around. We still have this left," Thor said producing from his belt an ox-skin flask of what Loki knew to be Dwarf brandy. Distilled essence of stupid; dumb in a bottle. Loki stared in disbelief as Thor took a large gulp and passed the flask to Loki asking, "So what were you thinking about?"

Loki braved a much smaller sip. "About when we slept with Freya," he opted for a lie. He did not feel like ruining his friend's good spirits or poking at the open wound of a woman they had until a moment ago discussed with such light-hearted abandon.

"That was… a weird night," Thor nodded. "You ever did it after that?"

"Slept with another man while I was with a woman?" smirked Loki. "Ennilang, I would never betray you."

"You idiot. Slept with her?" asked Thor, drinking some more instant brain-death and sticking it under Loki's nose.

"A few times," Loki shrugged.

"Yeah, me too."

"According to Frey, she's just friendly that way."

"Well, she slept with him too, right?" said Thor after a pensive pause, as if all of this wasn't just two men reminiscing on sex, but something much more significant.

"Where'd you hear that?" Loki asked.

"Isn't it true?"

"It is but that's not the point. For Vanir it's normal, apparently," said Loki. He decided to fight fire with fire and threw his head back in a few heroic mouthfuls of Dwarfish alcohol. After all, his hangover couldn't get any worse than it was promising to be already.

"I wouldn't want to sleep with my brother," Thor said accepting the flask while Loki coughed the fire from his lungs. Thor contemplated the flask for a while before stating, "Maybe Baldur."

"Maybe, Ennilang?" Loki snickered in a strangled whisper and observed Thor's profile. It must have been the drink but in that moment he felt an overwhelming tenderness for every line of Thor's face: for his meaty nose, his elegant cheek bones, his wide, laughing mouth, and especially for the kind-looking watery-grey eyes. They were similar to Odin's, yet nothing like them for where Odin's eyes were penetrating, always picking right through the flesh and straight to the point, Thor's eyes seemed to envelop, accept.

"It is to me a strange thing to have a brother," Loki whispered before he knew what he was saying.

"But you have brothers," Thor said with a tone of surprise, looking up at Loki's face.  
"I do not much care for my brothers," Loki snorted. "And they do not much care for me."

"Hmm," Thor said, "I never much cared for my brothers either."

"Except for Baldur," Loki said.

"Except for Baldur," Thor nodded taking a long gulp of mead. "But everybody likes Baldur. Even you like Baldur."

Loki wriggled his fingers for Thor to pass the flask which he did. "Even I like Baldur."

The flask circled between them for a while more, before Thor spoke, "But we have many brothers now, Skywalker. When we want to have them."

"You do, perhaps. I still only have two."  
Thor's face lit with concern, tenderness and annoyance the way it always did when Loki made similar moody comments. "You know entirely too many things about entirely too many people in this city, mate. And you love to remind them of it, and you play tricks on them. We both know your humour can be cruel. You have to forgive them for sometimes biting back."  
Loki laughed. It was a strangely black laugh. "That is not the reason they bite back."  
Thor snorted, recognizing the old debate and repeating the old arguments, "Skadi is as much an outsider in that respect as you are. For fuck sakes, Freya and Frey, Njörd, all former foes and they are counted."

"Hmm," Loki said, too tired, too drunk and too limp from Frey's drugs to get into that conversation. Whether Thor truly did not see the differences, or simply did not wish to see them, Loki could not be certain, but he felt a little warmth creep around the stones in his chest, making them no lighter but somehow more comfortable to bear. Truly, having a brother was a strange thing.

"So what'd you say we had to talk about?" Thor asked, rocking the flask to find that it had only a few gulps of alcohol left. He dutifully offered it to Loki, but Loki shook his head. Shrugging, Thor guzzled the contents.

"Never mind now," Loki smiled tiredly. "You'll forget about it in the morning."

"It is morning."

"Not, it's not, it's a shiny thing. Weren't you paying attention?"

Thor chuckled, turned towards the shiny thing. "I like you best when you're sleepy and shitfaced, you know that, Horse Mother?"

Loki retaliated by licking his little finger and slipping it into Thor's ear. Thor spit the last of his drink all over himself and was preparing to curse viciously before Loki cut him off, "We have to go into Utgard."

"Oh?" Thor said, momentarily forgoing his revenge. He even seemed to sober up. "What for?"

Loki frowned at the floor, trying to think through the haze of alcohol, hemp, and that Vana poppy-snot that had so thoroughly paralyzed him, mind, body and soul. "When we were in Thrym's house, I found that his bitch-mother had some… Elder Magic."

"Hmm," Thor pretended to understand.

"Doesn't matter. All you have to know is that it's not something that you just find lying around, and even if it is, it's not something you should just pick up. The Alfödr would have us go to one of the places where it may have come from, to see the Lord of the Outlands."

"And who is the Lord of the Outlands?"

"Loki."

"What?" blurted Thor.

"No, you dipshit," Loki scuffed. "The guy's called Loki."

"Ooooh," Thor finally made the connection, digging on an old memory with his eyebrows drown together. "Wait, Utgarda-Loki? Isn't he, like, related to you?

Loki sighed with exasperation. "Where do you get these things from? He isn't."

"But he is a Jötunn King, right?" asked Thor.

"Jötnar don't exactly have kings," Loki said slowly.

"But he's the equivalent, right?"

"What Utgarda is, Ennilang, is older than the Alfödr. We're not going over there to challenge him so don't even think about it."

"I wasn't," Thor protested.

Loki smacked him over the head. "You were. Don't lie to me, you know you can't. Utgarda will test us. And you must let him. Just keep calm."

"Test us?"

"Never mind. I'll tell you more when the Alfödr returns. We may not have to go over there after all, if he finds something out first." A vain, silent hope. "Now let me enjoy my hangover in peace."

Loki turned back to the sunrise, golden and pink coloured. He would be happy to sit there, immobile, and look at that sunrise for the rest of time. His headache was somewhere in front of his eyes now, and soon he would have to crawl into a dark, cool place to find sleep blessedly free of dreams. But first, he would have this tiny moment of breathless peace.

* * *

Yngvi: another name for Frey, also meaning Lord.

_All the dramatic episodes and characters here are copyright of traditional Scandinavian and Icelandic tales, as found in the Poetic and Prose Edda, and some other sources. However, some are reinterpreted or changed slightly to suit my dark purpose. I encourage any of you who are interested in what the original story might have been, or how it pertains to what I have written here, to either ask me directly or research online._

_Having said that, it shouldn't matter too much whether or not you are an expert on Norse mythology or not; everything gets explained eventually. I hope._

_Except in some cases in which an alternate spelling is more common, I use John Lindow's guide to Norse mythology for names of people and places._


	7. Chapter 7

**Of Helheim and Loki's First Wife**

He travelled the scenery between worlds, his horse trotting slowly and lazily for Loki knew that on these roads you would reach your destination no sooner if you moved faster towards it. The not-worlds would unfold at their own pace, at a speed which had no bearing on time. Distance too was a figment of the imagination, depending fully on how far the traveller himself felt one place was in relation to another. In the end, both time and distance varied with respect to the traveller's mood, and the trip was a long one today for Loki's mind was unfocused and burdened with complex thoughts. The lands between worlds were ancient and treacherous. It was easy to lose the way there, digging deeper and deeper into oneself.

Loki willed himself to gather his senses and soon the scenery bent to his will, fading slowly around the edges until, at the next blink of the eye, he found himself in the serene, eternal twilight of Helheim. Mountains towered over each side of the road bathed in the crisp air of young winter. The ever-present mists were forming on the hills, ready to roll down. Every day in Helheim was the slow progress from the crystalline chills of early winter, through its roaring winds and snow, to the black silence of the night awaiting spring that would never come. It was a representation of the first time, of the world formed from the mist and ice, before there were ever any to inhabit it.

The chilled air found crevices in his clothes, ways around the collar he'd pulled up, and between the belts holding his jacket in place. Loki frowned at the wind and folded his hands to warm them. The horse knew the way because Loki knew it, and continued to obediently walk in that same relaxed pace, oblivious to its rider's musings.

Loki heard a quiet shifting behind him like the whisper of fur against the stones and moss. He was being stalked. He was not in the mood. Helheim was home to many outcasts who were tough enough to live there, but not tough enough to carve a place for themselves anywhere else. These creatures, mostly wretched and despised, swore allegiance to Hel in return for a free living, but their loyalty did not extend far enough for them to show courtesy to Hel's guests. Anyone on the road to Eljudnir was expected to fend for themselves. Loki halted his horse and waited for his stalkers to come around to face him. Two shadowy figures, neither men nor bears, came out to stand in front of him. They were cursed creatures, human or Jötunn or something else, who have dabbled with things they could not handle. Much like they were doing now.

The bear-men and Loki looked at each other for a while, until the fiercer one of the two spoke, "Traveller, I have the right to claim the flesh! Give me your horse or we take both of you." His speech was rendered slurred by the over-large fangs in a mouth not meant for them, and by the intense, urgent hunger nestled in his throat.

Loki said nothing but continued glaring at them. The smaller bear-man squinted at him then suddenly turned to his companion. "Leave this one."

The other did not budge, desperation driving him on. "Give me the animal!"

"Leave this one, I tell you. It is Hel Father, the Skywalker!" said the smaller one, patting the leader on the shoulder fretfully.

"You should listen to your friend," Loki said. "I would not walk today."

Swatting his comrade's hand away the big one shouted, "The animal! Or gold!"

"Leave it," insisted the cautious one.  
"It is our right!"

Loki sighed. "What would you do with gold in Helheim, bearling? Besides, I carry none."

"The horse then!" shouted the big one.

"No," said Loki.

"Then I claim it, and your life!" growled the first bear-beast and, mad from the drug that had made him what he was, charged Loki, quickly closing the distance between them in two powerful bounds. His friend had but a split second to think what to do, and, opting for loyalty, ran at the rock face to launch himself off of it and find Loki's flank. They were fast and coordinated but it was not enough. Out of thin air, Loki drew Laevateinn and cleaved the first berserker in half before the second even managed his jump. As the smarter one was turning in the air, he realized his mistake. A horrifyingly peaceful expression appeared on his deformed face. Loki's blade caught him under the chin and took his head clean off.

They were so starved of food and drink that their blood trickled dark and thick like batter. Loki wiped Laevateinn on some moss and ordered his horse to a trot. The wind brought heavy, large snowflakes that froze in contact with the dead earth and stone by the time Loki could see Eljudnir. It was covered in mist, standing alone above the Precipice of the World, with black water of Gjöll trickling to either side of it. Even embraced by the gigantic mountains, it was impressive. The house of all the souls who did not die good deaths. Murderers, traitors, deceivers, but also cowards, renegers, oath-breakers, and most importantly, those who died as adversaries of Asgard, or killed by Aesir hands – all were enclosed into the numberless, windowless rooms of that keep, with Hel their mistress. This was the bargain he had struck with Odin.

Loki reached the bridge into Eljudnir and nodded to Modgud, the bridge-keeper and solitary guard of the keep itself.

"Master Laufeyjarson," Modgud said with a shallow bow at him from her seated position on a rock next to the bridge. Large, calloused hands were rested lightly on her sheathed sword. "It has been a long time. The mistress will be pleased."

"Yes, Modgud," said Loki, producing a smile for her and riding out onto Gjallarbru. Modgud was by far the largest, tallest, most muscled woman he had ever met and he thought that perhaps her clothes would have fit Thor just fine. Then again, Modgud, his daughter's own Modgud, only ever wore armour. Her flat, wide face belittled the intelligence of her dark brown eyes, but Loki knew it to be there, along with a fierce devotion to her duty. It was not that anyone would ever think to invade Helheim but some have tried to take back loved ones, what is to say those rare ones to end up in Hel who were loved by someone or other while they were still alive. Modgud would stop them at the bridge over Gjöll.

There had also been those, heroic, demented, who rode into Helheim to take Hel herself. Those Modgud would let cross for those who thought to take Hel were all taken by her, and so their imprudent wish was fulfilled.

Loki dismounted and left the horse to take shelter from the wind as best it could. The doors of Eljudnir opened for him and he went inside. A wide corridor of silver and granite led to Hel's hall. He found her waiting for him, standing next to her throne. She had her mother's jet black hair, straight, silky and long, and her father's dark eyes, but there was something soft about her features which was absent from both her parents' faces. Her complexion was deathly pale, tinted blue like that of a frozen corpse, but Loki only had eyes for her careful, bashful smile which lit up her whole face. His only daughter. What man would not think his only daughter beautiful even if she didn't have those delicate hands, or those lovely, pouty lips, or that proud forehead?

"Hel," he said to her catching her head between his hands. Hel inclined her face upwards and they kissed on the lips, long and slow, the way he knew she liked to be kissed. "My Hel," he whispered to her as she smiled. "Show me your mother."

Hel nodded and led her father through a passage behind her seat into the chambers of the most precious dead. It was a short walk before Hel stopped in front of a door, unnumbered and identical to so many others. It opened for her, as it would only open for her, and Loki went in.

The woman lying on a bed of wolf skins was tall, dark haired and sinewy. Her features were perhaps a bit angular, a bit strong but by no means unattractive. Even in her death-sleep there was a slight frown on her face, as if she was in deep thought. Loki remembered that expression from the thousands of mornings he'd woken up next to her.

He kneeled at the head of the bed and whispered in the North tongue, "Angrboda was your name. I am Loki. I was your husband. I am the father of your children. Give me a moment of your eternity."

It was like watching a woman falling asleep in reverse. Angrboda's perfectly still features infused with light and consciousness, and she took a sharp breath with lungs that hadn't known air in years. Her eyes opened cautiously, blinking at the suffused light that was pooling from the very walls.

"Why do you wake me?" she asked once she found her voice. Carefully, she pulled herself up to sit against the headboard. Her body was so unused to moving it seemed to have forgotten how to do it, and Angrboda had to look at every limb as she manipulated it into position.

"I need your council," said Loki and took a seat on a tall-backed chair laid out for him, drinking in the sight of her. "And I do miss speaking in the mother tongue."

"Humph," Angrboda snorted and waited for the real reason.

Loki sighed, a distant expression on his face. "I need to let my mind trickle out, to see it reflected in another person, see if I can make sense of it."

"And you cannot do this with your wife?" Angrboda asked.

"I am doing it with my wife," Loki answered.

"Your Asynja lay," said Angrboda lightly.

She wasn't being cruel and she wasn't being obtuse. It was just her way of reminding him how much he missed her. Loki supposed she wanted to be sure he still did and so he never responded to the taunts. After all, in Angrboda's private opinion marrying Sigyn was akin to treason for any number of reasons, and none of them had anything to do with base jealousy. Yet she kept those accusations to herself today.

"I know what she would say if I told her what I want to tell you," he mouthed. "But you have always been the bigger mystery. The complete mystery."

"Only to you," said Angrboda somewhat distractedly.

"What do you mean?"

"Never mind," she shook her head. "What have you come to tell me?"

Loki sunk deeper into his chair, the excitement and joy flushing away from his face. He collected his thoughts. He would tell her everything and he wanted to tell it truthfully.

"It is a dream. I dream of the End Time."

Angrboda nodded heavily. "What do you dream?"

Loki closed his eyes and started speaking very slowly, "I could be anywhere, dreaming anything, when I smell smoke, and my fingertips feel numb. Like when they are scolded or frozen, and the blood is just coursing back." As he said it, he could feel it and rubbed his fingertips sheepishly.

"Wherever I was in the dream until then, it turns into a dead place and I slowly go down on my knees. Behind me I can hear a noise. I think it is buzzing; then I think it may be a waterfall. As if it is water breaking on the rocks. Then I think, no, it's too metallic, perhaps it is a forge. But as I listen, I realize it is the battle. End Time is behind me."

Loki swallowed. His legs felt cold, as if he'd truly sunk into frosty black mud. "I do not turn to look at it, because I stare ahead," he said, not daring to open his eyes and see Angrboda's face. "I see our sons. Jörmungand is coiled around me, as small as when he'd been born. He convulses once, twice and goes still as I look at him. Out of my focus, I can see the Hammer Wielder, face down on the ground. Or I hold Fenrir, and he is already dead, and I know Grimnir weakened him, only to die inside, and his son finished the work. And I feel… rage. Angrboda, I feel fury."

"This is the end of your dream?" he heard his wife ask.

Loki hesitated, but he'd made up his mind to tell her everything. Eyes shut, he licked his dry lips. "No. Because I kneel there and become once more aware of the battle behind me. The anger makes me stand and I turn to look but before I can see I wake up." He corrected himself, "I wake myself up."

"You run from the vision?" Angrboda asked.

Loki shook his head. "I… don't know. I-, maybe," he stuttered. "Yes. I do not want to know it."

"Why not?"

Finally opening his eyes, Loki found his wife perched at the foot of her bed, observing him meticulously. He gave her an exhausted, almost sardonic smirk. "I do not want to know whom I fight."

"Are you afraid who your opponent may be?" Angrboda asked sharply.

"You misunderstand me. I do not want to know… with whom, against whom I fight."

"Oh," his wife said, her eyebrows easing out of their knot for the first time.

"Angrboda," Loki said in a harassed whisper. "I do not want to know which it will be. Will I be true to my blood oath, or to my blood?"

"I see," she said considering his words. "Both are cruel betrayals."

Loki smiled weakly. "You think one more so than the other."

Angrboda nodded. "I do."

"Let us not have that debate today."

"Very well," she matched his faltering smile. "I am not entirely insensitive to your..."

"My sensibilities?" Loki suggested.

"Your delusions," Angrboda concluded, experimentally stretching her back.

"Hmm," Loki laughed through his nose. He extended a hand towards her. "Come here, wife."

"Those words you can use on your wife," Angrboda said without the smallest trace of humour.

Loki relented. "Come here, my oldest teacher. I miss your harshness."

"My harshness?" she snorted but gripped his hand and got up to her feet. Her two steps were insecure but determined and she seated herself on his lap in a very controlled, graceful way.

"You are a monolith, Iron-bred," Loki mumbled, combing her hair over one shoulder to expose her long neck. He pressed his fingers into it and Angrboda gave a satisfied mumble, almost like a low purr. "I can never have a full grasp of you."

She laughed in that way specific to her, ringing and haughty. "Am I such an unknown?"

"To me you are."

"I am transparent to all others," Angrboda said leaning further back to catch his hands.

"Impossible."

"Oh, but yes. I have always been. You had made me so."

"I don't remember having ever made you do anything," Loki commented and was rewarded with another crystalline laugh.

"You have made me simple, Loki," said Angrboda and leaning all the way into him. Loki made room for her on the chair and they relaxed there, her legs over his, his hand around her waist, rust-red hair tangling into black. "Everything I do, and all my dark mystery, it only ever baffles you who are the cause of it. Everybody else sees me for what I am."

"What is that?" Loki asked.

"Yours," said Angrboda simply. She was not the type of woman who demanded poetry, neither was she the type who freely gave it away in a thousand tattered phrases, worn from overuse. She made simple statements, asked the necessary question and gave straightforward answers. This was her honesty. Still, Loki felt a surge of male possessiveness and kissed her shoulder, cradling her hip in his hand.

"Your dream," Angrboda said watching him closely.

"My dream?" he prompted.

"Does it feel prophetic?"

"Seeing how I never get to the prophetic part… Shall we just call it a nightmare for the time?"

Angrboda smirked but remained serious. "I will think on it. But perhaps you are wise not to have turned. I would have."

"Would you have?" Loki quirked his head.

"I think so. And whatever I would have seen there, I would not have liked it."

"Indeed," Loki said darkly. "Yet there may come a time when I will feel that anger, when I will have to make that choice."

Angrboda contemplated a while. "There may yet. But when, _if_, it does you would know what choice is the right one for you."

"How can you be sure?"  
"Because, my love, Ragnarök could not start without you having made it," she said softly. "And you would never make it unless you wanted to."

"I wanted to?" Loki frowned. "I do not want to."

"Not today, not tomorrow, not in a lifetime, and maybe never. But if you ever do want to make it, you will know which one to make. It is a simple tautology."

"Hmm," murmured Loki, burying his face in Angrboda's hair while she played lazily with the fingers of his hand. She smelled of the night, or at least she did in his mind, calming and refreshing him.

Her simple tautology was disconcerting, but also strangely comforting. That he would choose Ragnarök seemed an insane thing indeed, but that without his choice it could not begin rang somehow true. He had been playing the fence between Asgard and Vanaheim on one side, and Jötunheim and Muspelheim on the other for centuries. They had come close to total war several times, twice even through his own efforts, but Loki had always laboured to settle the matter. He had so far been successful, and had brought the world back from where it had been teetering on the brink of damnation. In the future he knew there would be plenty more of hot-headed Aesir to contend with, or young, teething Jötunn who would try out their bite. As long as he did not make up his mind to go either way, perhaps he would be able to contain every one of these expeditions into ruination.

"Oh, there's another thing," Loki mumbled after a while. "I may have to go see Uncle."

"Oh?" said Angrboda, voice filled with surprise and almost girlish glee. "What possessed you?"

"I know you like how he takes the piss out of me, but that's really no reason to rub it in," he told her.

"Rub it in? I was just wondering why?" she said innocently.

"Simple reason, the one you're going to scoff at, is that the Alfödr asked me to," he said and predictably she scoffed. "The more complicated reason… Do you remember Thrym?"

Angrboda pouted her lips, trying to recall what was to her a name from another life.

"You know, the tall, dark-haired one, son of that guy…" Loki said, finding he could not call to memory the name of Thrym's late father. "The tall, dark-haired one."

"Oh, yes," Angrboda nodded. "Who married that one, what was her name?"  
"Hadda," Loki growled. "I am told."

Angrboda raised an eyebrow and folded her knees over the side of the chair, looking for a more comfortable position. "Hadda, that's right. I gather she is still as much of a bitch as I remember her being."  
"Older, but just as much of a bitch. In any case, Hadda's little boy, Thrym, had stolen Mjölnir and-"

"Stolen the Hammer?" Angrboda put in immediately.

"You are quick," Loki smirked. "Stolen and bound it."

"How?" she asked, aghast.

"How he'd stolen it, I have no idea. Thor won't say, not under the pain of death. As to how he bound it, well that's the point isn't it?" Loki mumbled, twining his fingers with Angrboda's. "It seems it wasn't him that did it, anyway. Hadda got her hands on a collection of brass leaflets, forty or more. You see where this is going?"

He could tell she did, for her face was growing darker by the moment.

"Well, the obvious place she might have gotten them from is Utgard. To use the Alfödr's words, it suggests itself."

Angrboda got up from Loki's lap to pace once around the small room, slow and steady just like her thoughts. Loki settled into the chair, feet up over the hand rest. It could be mere minutes, it could be hours, but Angrboda would not be disturbed in her thinking.

"Utgarda would not have given the Old Script to just anybody," Angrboda spoke after a while. "He is not that irresponsible."  
"I am not so sure," Loki said.

"I am," she said making another circle around the room before bursting out, "The Runes are not playthings! How could anyone be so fucking stupid to use them without knowing the first thing about what they do or how they work? Where does that type of hubris even come from?"

"Ignorance," Loki suggested. "Greed. Or desperation. Take your pick." He thought briefly of the berserkers he'd killed on the way to Eljudnir.

"Ignorance, hah!" Angrboda spat each word like they were bile. "Hadda is one of that ilk who would carve out their own children to make steps upwards, never mind kissing arse and spreading her fucking legs! Acting on base impulse, selfish and near-sighted, that bitch, whatever cunt gave her the leaflets, all of you!"

"All of us?" Loki inquired.

"Ah, yes, well you are the champion of playing the dangerous game!" she said with a sardonic grimace on her face.

He frowned. "Never with the Old Script, never with the Elder Magic. You have taught me well."

"On that account, maybe! But look at everything else you've done, what you're doing. You and Grimnir are messing with things you have no grasp of."

"We are trying to prevent them!" Loki protested, getting up.

"You are two blind men tiptoeing in the mist, and the next step might take you over the fucking edge! There is no older magic than causality, Loki, and no stranger law. And it cannot be wielded!"

"I do not seek to wield causality-"

"You would steer the future! What the fuck do you call that?"

"Hope," whispered Loki. "Will."

Angrboda stared at him, eyes harsh and the colour of a glacier. "Terror."

"Defiance in the face of it."

"Hubris."

"So you would have me lie down for it? Let it all happen?" Loki shouted. "Woman, how could you expect that I would know what I know and take it?"  
"What do you know?" Angrboda hissed. "A drop of blood in the ocean."

"I know that there is a future in which everything I knows implodes in onto itself! I know there is a time in which I watch my children slaughter and get slaughtered!"  
"There is that future," she nodded, voice harsh and low. "What is the way to it? Where is it you are steering?"

"Away!"

"And into what?"

Loki realized he had her hard by the shoulders. Her numb body couldn't feel it completely but he knew it was hard enough to bruise. He did not lessen the grip. "What do you care?" he snarled. "You crawled into death."

She glared at him until they both got their breathing under control. Then she closed her eyes, and he exhaled the anger in his chest. Their foreheads met midway.

"I thought we weren't going to discuss my delusions today," Loki breathed.

"We are not going to," she said, seeking out his face with her hands. "You are right, and you are wrong at the same time. Either choice damns you."

"You said I would make the choice when I want to. Without it, nothing will come of this blood drop."

"So guard yourself from wanting to make it. I do not know what else to tell you. The world works like alchemy: it does what it does, and sometimes what we ask it to do, but we are not sure how. And certainly not why."

"Time, heat and pressure," Loki whispered with a smile. "I have missed your temper, Iron-born."

Angrboda chuckled, rocking them back and forth gently. "I have not. We fought like cats and dogs, you and I, didn't we?"

"We made up like cats and dogs later."

"You always had a taste for volatile women. I am surprised to hear your Asynja is so docile."

"So everybody seems to think," Loki said pensively. "I would not call her docile."

"What would you call her?"

"I don't really know, but I know she is like you in all the relevant ways, wife. Patient, wise. Beautiful," he said, brushing Angrboda's hair back so that it fell over his hands, locked around the small of her back. "Mine."

Angrboda straightened to look him in the eyes. Her face was uncharacteristically soft, almost pleading and Loki gave her all of his attention immediately.

"I did not leave you," she said. "I left noise and terror and pain." Her voice was tired and he realized just how much she had been leaning into him.

"But you did, my breath. You left me too." He said it with no bitterness, only the honest, empty sadness he had grown to acknowledge lived in his heart, and learned to cohabit it with. He led her to the bed and arranged them there, knowing that this was her limit and she would go back to her sleep.

Head on his shoulder, and her black hair spread out around them like the wing of a raven, he could tell she was thinking many things at the same time and so he let her think. It hurt him that he would have to leave her, like it hurt every time, not because she would be asleep in a windowless room, locked in without dreams, but because he knew he would have to go out into the world full of windows and views without her. Full of worries. And worrisome dreams.

It was a selfish pain, but then again Loki was a selfish man.

She had taught him to use the Runes; together they had become masters of the Elder Magic, and once, when they were still quite young, and he was not the blood brother of the Hanging God, they'd gathered to themselves an army, great enough to threaten Asgard's reign.

Loki's timing was perfect. Right after the war Asgard had fought with the Vanir both their strengths were depleted, and the truce between the two peoples was young and unstable. And there he was, wife and eldest son at his side, along with a multitude of Jötnar from both of their realms, united, organized and eager to get rid of the foreign rule that had been oppressing them since time was created.

He was even then fully aware that he was not their leader. As he'd told Thor, the Jötnar didn't have kings, they did not accept authority. They bowed to power and bent to leadership just like any other race, but the reason Loki had succeeded in persuading them to all point in the same direction for a change was mainly their hate for the Aesir who would rule them. Loki and Angrboda had given the Jötnar pride, and demanded only that they stop their petty squabbling for the moment. That, and a few key faces present in their camp was enough: they had a force that could defeat the Aesir in any battle. But not win the war. Loki was very aware of that fact.

So was, it turned out, Odin. Loki had delivered his ultimatum to Asgard personally. With Angrboda waiting in Jötunheim, ready to cross the river with all the rage of the North, and Fenrir waiting in the South to take the Muspell warriors into the city which was at that time not yet protected by the wall, he sat down with the Alfödr for three full days. At that time, of course, the Alfödr was to him not the Alfödr at all, but the Father Slayer as the Jötnar called him.

They started by being civil to each other, then by insulting each other in the politest ways possible. Then they went on to try to bribe each other, Odin offering to Loki rule over this or that, Loki offering power-objects in Jötunn possession. On the second day all the niceties were over with and they spent the night threatening each other, attempting to incite the other into giving away their strategy. Finally, dawn of the last day, Odin asked Loki what he wanted for the Jötnar. Loki answered he wanted only self-rule; he wanted the Aesir warriors to stop breaching borders, stop trying to overtake the Jötunn lands, raping its women and stealing its riches. If Odin could provide that there would be no war.

Without a single word, Odin drew his dagger, cut his wrist and put the blade on the table in front of Loki. Loki remembered being so surprised he could barely think. In a daze, he cut his own wrist, almost down to the bone, and offered it to the Alfödr. Odin bound their hands together with a silver chain he had around his neck, the same one he later bestowed on Loki with the iron tablet hanging from it. The blood they'd spilt onto the table they both fashioned into Runes with each of their names, and thus the blood oath was sworn, and Odin and Loki were brothers.

Nobody, not even Loki, knew to this day exactly how he had managed to persuade the Jötnar to leave the battlefield. It was by all accounts a much bigger miracle than assembling them in the first place. Angrboda had understood that they had no power to win and keep winning against the Aesir, and even if they had done she would not have supported total war. Thus, through her efforts also what might have as well become Ragnarök was averted that day. Vaguely, he remembered that they'd used logic, argument, reason, and where those failed: trickery, bribery and threats, all in a hyperactive horror, but whatever the case, the mighty army, the greatest Jötunn army ever gathered, was dispersed that same day.

Odin kept true to his word. Jötnar had self-rule from that day on but the animosity between their peoples was never extinguished. Still, what surely started as a desperate last bid for peace became one of the most powerful bonds Loki could boast. Even while they were negotiating as enemies, Loki had to admit Odin had won him over. Angrboda said he had always liked volatile women. Well, it would seem he had always liked cunning, ruthless men. Their true friendship started much later, with the blood bond already in place. But the attraction was there from the first meeting.

Angrboda did not approve of Loki's growing fascination with the Aesir and their cat-and-dog fighting grew ever more explosive. Nevertheless, it was Angrboda again, saying she had seen enough and would sleep, who was the reason Loki had gone behind Odin's back and almost caused Ragnarök a second time.

In the present, Loki realized she had gone still and stiff. He held his dead wife in silence for a while longer. "I have wandered off," he whispered to her.

"You will wander back," she murmured, barely audibly, like with her last breath.

"Sleep, Angrboda. I will wander back." He kissed her lightly on both eyelids and slipped from beneath her. He walked to the door without turning to look at her again. Hel was waiting for him and walked in front to lead him into her room, pretending not to have noticed the red lining of his eyes. It was a meaningless courtesy for Hel was Eljudnir and knew everything that went on in it. Nevertheless he was grateful to her for it, as he was when moments later she pushed a glass of strong wormwood brandy into his hand.

Loki sipped the brandy and thought of the conversation he'd had. Hel waited patiently until he finished the drink. Outside, a whirlwind of snow and ice was ramming into Hel's windows – the only room in Eljudnir to have them. Loki was not quite sure about the view: it looked into the edge of Gjöll, as it fell off into Ginunnga Gap but Hel seemed not to mind looking into the edge of the world.

"Thank you, my Hel," he said to her when she took his glass.

"You are troubled, father," she spoke. Her voice was light, almost shy, and nothing like her mother's.

Loki smiled. "Passing worries."  
"They are not."  
"The mystery is constant, but the worries are passing," he told her. "Tomorrow I will laugh at myself. No, one was enough," he said when Hel went to refill his glass. "But I have a present for you."

He reached into his jacket to feel for a small parcel of fine velvet. He walked over to Hel, opening it. Suddenly, the room smelled of cantaloupes and warm rain. The transformation was immediate and incredible; Loki could hardly believe it himself. In Asgard, where it actually was spring, it could never achieve the brilliance it did here, in eternal, misty winter.

Carefully, he picked up the silvery jumble of chains and interwoven shapes: trees bearing fruit, rivers flowing between them, vines laden with young leaves forming triketra-knots and binding everything together. It was not the most complicated design, but at least there were no unseemly gaps or messy connections. It flowed fairly well, as Ivaldi would say. But the real magic was the metal, and the little gems with their smells, their heat and their life, like little beating hearts in amber, green and red. Hel gasped and braved to touch it.

"It is woven from a spring day," Loki explained, overjoyed to see Hel lean over to smell it, to bashfully touch the leafing branches of one little tree. She lifted her eyes to him and smiled like a little girl. Then, brushing her hair away, she turned to let him attach it around her neck. Obligingly, he did and watched her unable to stop running her fingers over the metallic surface, craning her neck to see it.

"It suits you," he told her before she could sprain a vertebrae.

"Thank you," said Hel.

He nodded, warm despite the hailstorm he had to walk into. "I must away. Kiss me, my Hel."

Hel enveloped her father's head in her tiny hands, much more alive now thanks to the alchemy of the necklace, and they shared another slow kiss. Loki held her thinking of nothing but the feel of her little body, so incredibly fragile for one of such fearsome power, and imagining nothing but the good things he wanted for her, all the good things she deserved. "I will come again as soon as I can," he promised and touched his lips to her forehead.

They walked back into the hall, Loki refastening his jacket tighter around himself, when suddenly Hel spoke again. "Father."

"Yes?"

Hel hesitated, looking him in the eyes with those big black orbs so like his own. She was troubled but he could not tell why. "There is a woman who was known to me," she said slowly. "But who took her thoughts away with her. Three times she unbound herself from me."

Loki frowned. "What woman?"

"Gullveig, a daughter of man. The speaker of dreams."

"Yes?"  
"I remember wishing to own her thoughts for you, but I cannot remember why. I do not know where she is. But perhaps you should find her."

Loki nodded that he understood and went out into the cold to see if his horse was still alive.

* * *

Gjöll: One of the great rivers of Norse cosmology; flows though Helheim. Also the name of the stone Fenrir is bound to.

Gjallarbru: Bridge over Gjöll

Asynja: Name for the Goddesses of Asgard (as opposed to Aesir, which is the collective for all the gods and goddesses; the male gods are As)

Grimnir: "Hooded one"; kenning for Odin, used most often when other races, especially the Jotnar, speak of him.

_All the dramatic episodes and characters here are copyright of traditional Scandinavian and Icelandic tales, as found in the Poetic and Prose Edda, and some other sources. However, some are reinterpreted or changed slightly to suit my dark purpose. I encourage any of you who are interested in what the original story might have been, or how it pertains to what I have written here, to either ask me directly or research online._

_Having said that, it shouldn't matter too much whether or not you are an expert on Norse mythology or not; everything gets explained eventually. I hope._

_Except in some cases in which an alternate spelling is more common, I use John Lindow's guide to Norse mythology for names of people and places._


	8. Chapter 8

**Of Utgardar, the Castle between the Worlds, and Its Master, part 1**

They came out on a windswept plane of low grasses and gigantic, growling, grey boulders that seemed to grow out of the very earth. In front of them there was more of the same, seemingly stretching into infinity, and behind them the darkest of the forests of Jötunheim: Jarnvid, the Iron Wood. This was as far as Heimdall could send them with the Bifröst. Beyond this point, they would have to make their own way, out into the steppes, across the marshes, and all the way to Utgard. Loki caught his hair, whipping around him in a windy frenzy, and bound it with a spare bit of leather. Thjalfi squinted beneath his cap.

"How far would you say, Master Skywalker?"  
"Two days, two and a half if the marshes are boggy."

"Let's go then," said Thor, pulling the mule that carried their provisions nearer to his horse.

Loki started them off at a canter in a vague north-easterly direction that he remembered from childhood. Keeping Jarnvid to their right, he led them at a steady pace and out of the wind's wrath. They stopped for lunch in the shadow of the pines. Loki listened to Thjalfi and Thor bickering over Thjalfi's cooking, and took deep breaths of powerful nostalgia. The little rabbit had asked him whether he was homesick. Well, if anything was home then it was this place. Was he sick for it? Or sick of it? He'd spent hours, days, riding the steppes on a horse far too big for him, or climbing the trees in the Iron Wood, trying out his luck with the wolves, bears, big cats and boars. He could probably still find the rock face he'd tumbled off of, fighting with Byleist, or the stream where he'd made his first, very poorly thought-through transformation into a salmon, barely escaping a hungry bear's claws. And if he led them into the wood itself, and up to the North, straight into the mountains, they would arrive at the home he'd shared with Angrboda.

They packed up after a short rest and continued along the border of the wood, the scenery occasionally speckled with spectacular ruins of stone fortresses and strange sculptures half buried into the ground. The sun climbed high, and then started tangling itself into their eyes. It was warm despite the wind, and the sky was endlessly blue with only a few clouds rushing across it as if they were running to a Thing somewhere on the other side of the plains. By the time Loki ordered their halt, both the men and horses were exhausted, but they had reached the end of Jarnvid, Loki's goal for the day. They shared a quiet meal, camped out in the shelter of a boulder, and fell asleep beneath the stars.

The morning broke, as beautiful and surreal as the previous day. Thjalfi built a fire and put their iron pot on to heat up, conversing with Thor. Loki squinted over the grasslands. In the distance, he could see the giant rock that would be their half-way point for the day, provided they didn't get bogged down in the marshes around it. Scaling it wouldn't be nearly as difficult as scaling down, but it was better than wasting time trying to go around it in the boggy soil. Utgarda started beyond that boulder – the Outlands, although still part of Jötunheim, no-man's lands. Well, Utgard-Loki's lands, Loki supposed. They skirted the very edge of the physical world, and sometimes the metaphysical spilled in. Yes, nostalgia or no nostalgia, the deceptively open and inviting plains were capricious. Just like their master.

"What's that about my wife?"

"Hm?" Loki muttered, looking to Thor.

"See," Thor said to Thjalfi. "He's not listening at all."

"Master Skywalker, you seem a bit distracted," Thjalfi said with a giggle.

"What is it about this guy that's got you so tight?" Thor complained. "You're making me nervous."

"You should be nervous," Loki muttered, rummaging through their fire to get more heat in.

"Family reunions are not your thing then?" Thjalfi put in.

"Where'd you get that from, little rabbit?" Loki said, catching the boy's gaze with his glare, yet Thjalfi was unfazed.

"Thor, my master," he muttered with that sarcastic pause between "Thor" and "my master" that so perfectly characterized their relationship.

Loki looked to Thor, who shrugged, "I talked to my father. Utgarda is practically your family, right? If not actually."

Loki sighed in exasperation. "What is with this sudden interest in my family?"

"Well," Thor said with an air of academism around him, "It's just that I've recently noticed how I know zero embarrassing things about you," he said, cleaning his fingernails with his spoon. "Except being the Horse Mother, Horse Mother. But everybody knows that story."

"Yep," Thjalfi agreed. "Even I know that story."

"You see?" Thor nodded to him. "I don't think that's fair. So spit it out. What is it with Utgarda, why don't you like him?"

"Did he fuck your wife, Master Skywalker?" asked Thjalfi, trying to look innocent.

"Mother, rumour has it," Thor put in. "Well, you were named after him, right?" he said in response to Loki's growl.

"I was maybe named after him," Loki grumbled. "But he's not my father, for the final fucking time. We look nothing alike."

"No, because you look like your mother," Thor stated. Then shrugged his shoulders at Loki's outraged expression. "The Alfödr said."

"He's never met my mother!"

"You can hope…" Thjalfi said, stirring their vegetable stew.

"You two… I've decided I'll leave you two cunts right here and you can bone one another until you knock each other's teeth out," Loki growled at their two smirking faces. "Hangatyr did not screw my mother because he never met her, that much I am sure. As for Utgarda, he may or may have not fucked her, I don't know, don't care, that's between the two of them. And I don't dislike him… per se. He's just very… difficult."

"Difficult?" inquired Thjalfi.

"Capricious," Loki mumbled. "He's never serious about anything, He likes to play tricks on his so-called court, all of whom are as bat-shit crazy as he is. Or pretending to be. He's clever as fuck and likes to let you know it."

Thor snorted. "I'm used to all these things, mate. You just don't have a court."

"Ennilang, I may have my moments but he's in a different league. I cut off Sif's hair for a laugh. Utgarda may have cut off her head. And then put it on one of your goats," Loki said darkly, but before he could say anything else, their attention snapped into the direction of the Iron Wood. A large, hulking figure in a dark red travelling cloak was trudging heavily towards their shelter, every now and then looking up towards them.

The three of them stood to attention. Thor unclasped Mjölnir from his necklace, Thjalfi inched towards his spear, and Loki readied himself to unbend space and produce Laevateinn if the figure made any sudden movements. But the lone traveller only continued his steady shuffle. As he came closer, they could see it was a tall, stocky man with a bushy, black beard. He raised his large hand in greeting and smiled widely. While Thor undoubtedly looked for signs of hidden weapons, Loki concentrated his sight to search the figure for signs of magic. But as he did, the wind blew a piece of grit into his eye and Loki lost eye-contact.

"A good morning to you, travellers!" the man said in a booming voice, as befit his ruddy beard and red cheeks.

"Morning," answered Thor.

"Strange to meet a party on these plains," the stranger said coming to a stand just at the limit of their little camp.

"Stranger still to meet a lone man, and on foot," said Loki still rubbing his eye.

"Oh, that old rag of mine fell from under me," shrugged the man, waving his hands above his head. "I had to lug my own baggage around for two days now."

Loki could not see any weapons, concealed or otherwise, but as he once more concentrated to search him, his eye acted up again, itchy and blinding.

"Have you eaten already?" said Thor who, also finding no suspicious bulges in the man's clothing, automatically became unable to be unwelcoming. "We were about to breakfast."

"Kind of you! Very kind of you," said the man, immediately flipping out an animal skin to make a place for himself around their fire. "I would welcome company. And where are you bound for?"

"Utgard, my friend," Thor said before Loki could stop him. "Yourself?"

"The same! Good fortune I had come upon you. It has rained three days ago, heavy rain too."

"Really?" said Thor, sitting back down, and giving away not only the fact that he had little idea why the rain was relevant, but also the fact that his party had not been within the borders of Jötunheim three days past – an impossible feat had they not used magic to travel.

Loki wanted to beat his head against the rock but settled for a hissed, "Really."

The stranger nodded, eyeing the leftover piece of ham that Thjalfi had cut into their stew. "The marshes will be boggy. One could sink if one didn't know the way."

"We know the way," Loki said before Thor could do any more damage. His eye bothered him still. He sat down carefully, and following his lead Thjalfi did too, pointedly using his dagger and not the ladle to mix the stew.

"Then you are a guest of my Lord of the Outlands?" the stranger exclaimed in a happy voice. "I am Skrymir."

Skrymir bowed and then started digging through his enormous satchel until he came up with a clay bowl. He leaned over and picked up Thjalfi's discarded ladle, and before anyone could utter a single word, he scooped into it their stew, now with the aromatic ham floating inside. "I would be happy to take you to the castle if you only let me ride that horse a while," Skrymir said, mouth full and smiling. "My feet are swollen and my back sore."

Thor stared at the brazen forwardness of the stranger but again found himself unable to deny help to a tired man. He looked to Loki and mumbled, "We could redistribute the provisions among us, free up the draught animal..."

"No, not that wonky pony," laughed Skrymir, waving his spoon dismissively at their mule which stood there oblivious to the whole discussion. "A real horse. The sorrel."

It was Thor's sorrel. Loki dunked a piece of flatbread into his portion of the stew, and awaited Thor's response.

Thor looked stuffed. "I suppose I could take Thjalfi's horse," he squeezed out.

"I suppose you could take the wonky pony," Thjalfi said.

Skrymir's eyebrows went up. "Thjalfi?" he exclaimed excitedly. "The little pet of Thor?"

"Pet?" said Thjalfi. Loki filled up his mouth with hot stew to keep from snickering. It seared his tongue but it was well worth it.

"Yes, this is Thjalfi," said Thor, somewhat cheered by Skrymir's characterization of him.

"So you must be Thor, son of Odin?" Skrymir continued excitedly.

"I am Thor."

"Son of Odin?"

"Yes, Thor," Thor said, losing some of his confidence. "Thor, son of Odin."

"What an honour!" Skrymir reached across the fire to shake Thor's hand that still held the spoon. "I did not know you at first. You're a bit smaller than I had imagined."

Heroically, Loki suppressed his laughter for Skrymir turned to him. "That must mean that you are…"

Loki quickly swallowed to lie but Thjalfi was even quicker and answered for him. "This is Master Skywalker, Loki of Asgard."

"Oh," said Skrymir still smiling but the smile no longer reached his eyes. "A guest not seen here in many years. A pleasure, Laufeyjarson."

Loki nodded slowly. "Likewise, Master Skrymir."

"Oh, I am no man's master," said Skrymir.

"Very few are."

"Hm," Skrymir smirked. Loki tried to look him in the eyes and search him, and yet again, his eye shut with that piece of dirt, rummaging right underneath his eyelid. Skrymir went back to his booming demeanour. "Oh, but this is lovely ham, truly. An Asgardian pig, is it? Did you slay it yourself, Asa-Thor?"

"Erm, no," answered Thor. Next to him, Thjalfi was probably imagining Thor chasing a pig down Asgardian streets and then slaying it in the manner one slew dragons. His face was turning blue as he held his breath.

"And so well cooked! Did your wife cook it?"

This time Thjalfi folded under the pressure and made a grunting sound that he barely managed to pass off as a cough.

"I don't think she did," Thor said, befuddled.

"I have but dried fruit to offer," Skrymir said, picking his satchel open to take out a leather pouch tied with string. "It isn't bad. Here."

"No, that's, that's fine, thank you…" Thor shook his hand with a polite smile.

"But you must!" Skrymir insisted, throwing the pouch to Thor. "Here, put it in, put it in, it goes well with the ham!"

Thor barely managed to catch the pouch without spilling his stew. Loki looked on in alert amusement as Thor struggled with the string, unable to pry it open. "I can't, I-," he mumbled.

"Oh?" said Skrymir, already on his second bowl of stew and pulling apart a large piece of their flatbread. "Well, you have to pull at it a bit. Here, I'll do it."

"No, no, that's fine," Thor said stubbornly. "I'll… ereark!" He was becoming red in the face as he pulled at the leather binding and tried to work the string apart.

Skrymir gobbled up more of the stew, then stood up and walked over to Thor just like an exasperated older brother might. "Here, you'll spill it all over the fire. Let me, Asa-Thor." Skrymir opened the bag of dried fruit and sprinkled it liberally over Thor's stew in spite of the man's protests, leaving him with a sweet jumble of pork, vegetables and floating bits of apricot.

"Something in your eye, Master Skywalker?" Thjalfi asked looking at Loki who was still blinking gingerly.

"Something's in my sight, little rabbit," Loki mouthed quietly. It was no grit that was keeping him from searching Skrymir. It was Skrymir's will. Well, that told him something.

Not that Skrymir could not be trusted – he knew that when he saw him travelling alone across the grasslands, but that he was someone to be contended with.

They packed up the provisions, distributing them among the four horses and, Skrymir propped in Thor's saddle on the sorrel, and Thor planted on the rather surprised-looking mule, his elbows and knees poking out sadly, they set out. All the while talking, Skrymir rode forwards, an unhappy Thor at his side, keeping an eye on his every movement. Thjalfi went in the middle, listening in on Skrymir's endless chiding of Thor and laughing into his collar silently. Nevertheless, his spear was no longer packed up at the back of the horse, but strapped to his back.

Loki rode at the back where he had a more complete view of their newest companion. In his mind, a little suspicion started forming, taking shape like a new star. If he was right, there was nothing to do. They would have to play along. If he was wrong, Skrymir may yet pull out a weapon and lunge for Thor's head.

Of course, that could still happen even if Loki was right. It was just that he doubted anything could be done about it.

"This is the problem with Aesir horses," Skrymir was saying after they've been in the marshes a while and Thjalfi's horse threw a shoe. Sitting on the sorrel, he observed Thor and Thjalfi, muddy and breathing hard, as they tried to take it off completely so that the horse could walk normally. "They are pretty to look at but no stamina. When I was younger, I used to dash around here on our littler ones. Much faster. Do you know what I mean, Laufeyjarson? I understand you are quite the lover of horses."

Thor and Thjalfi looked up for Loki's reaction, eyes wide.

"Well, they've never fallen from under me rather than finished a journey," Loki retorted.

"Hahaha! What about you, Thor, son of Odin? You prefer goats, no?" Skrymir laughed.

"It's not a preference," mumbled Thor, as they managed to pull the lopsided shoe off. He wiped the sweat off his brow and mounted the mule again. "They just pull my carriage."

"Must be some goats," Skrymir agreed. "Never liked the creatures myself. Their eyes are funny. And all goat masters tend to be rather unpleasant, stinky, randy old buggers, I always found."

"Oh," said Thor, trying not to react to the despised soubriquet.

"Have you known many randy old buggers, then?" Thjalfi said in an annoyed voice.

"As few as possible. How about you, little Thjalfi?"

"My father was one," Thjalfi growled, remounting his horse.

"A randy old bugger?!" Skrymir exclaimed in shock.

"No, a goatherd."

As they set off again, Loki smiled, fairly sure Skrymir knew this already.

"Oh, I see. I am glad. Today's children are sometimes so disrespectful to their elders. Don't you find, Asa-Thor?"

"Erm," said Thor.

"What about your children, are they respectful?" Skrymir asked Thor.

"I don't have any."

"Really?" Skrymir wondered. "But I understood your wife is quite a little minx. What's stopping you?"

Thor bumbled, "Nothing, it's just-,"

"You should get to it, get to it! Takes a lot of trials to get it right," Skrymir shook his head. "The first bunch, they're always monsters, they are."

Loki's eyes snapped upwards to the back of Skrymir's shaggy head, all humour suddenly drained away. This one was meant for him, and Thor and Thjalfi felt it like a trickle of cold water down their spines.

"Yes, I'll get to it," Thor said after a short silence.

"Well, you can't right now, can you? Haha, it has been explained to you how all that works, right?"  
"I know how it works!" Thor protested.

"Then is there something wrong with-," asked Skrymir, winking at Thor's crotch with a concerned look on his face.

"There is nothing wrong-," Thor shouted.

"Good, good, I hope there isn't," Skrymir cut him off. He turned to Loki. "What say you, Laufeyjarson, over or around?"

The half-way boulder was looming right over them, abruptly cutting off the passable way across the moor. "Over," Loki said.

"As you wish," said Skrymir. "You did always like to dangle your feet from high places," he added with an enigmatic smile. Thor quirked his head, but before the quirk could form into a question, Skrymir slammed his heavy hand on Thor's shoulder. "Up top we may have lunch. And a contest if you're up to it, Hammer Wielder?"

"What?" Thor blurted.

Skrymir jerked his chin at Thor's chain, Mjölnir bouncing on the end of it. "I've heard so much about that thing, I would see it in action. We could play an old Jötunn game." He turned to Loki with his signature large smile. "Knocking heads, you remember?"

As Thor stared in disbelief, Skrymir slapped him over the shoulder again. "Don't worry, I wouldn't make you knock your head, though, just try to break mine with the Mjöllmjöl."

"Mjölnir," Thor said frostily. Behind him, Thjalfi was breathless.

"Is it now?" Skrymir cocked an eyebrow.

"It is not something to be toyed with," Thor recited, utterly humourless.

"So it couldn't break my head?" Skrymir laughed. He pointed his horse up a narrow path cut into the rock face. "But a normal hammer ought to be able to do that. Unless you swing it like a little girl."

Thor fumed, mouth open. Thjalfi stopped next to him to hiss, "Master Thunder-bearer, the man wants you to break his head open. Why not grant him his wish?"

* * *

Thing: the English word, comes from the word for yearly assembly of the tribal chieftains; in mythology, also the assembly of the gods at Urd's Well. Similar to Vӗšte for Slavs and a Folkmoot/Folkmote for the Anglo-Saxons. Althingi is still the name of the Icelandic parliament.

Completely off topic, but I would truly love to visit Iceland... learn to ride a horse among all that lovely volcanic rock. Off topic...

_All the dramatic episodes and characters here are copyright of traditional Scandinavian and Icelandic tales, as found in the Poetic and Prose Edda, and some other sources. However, some are reinterpreted or changed slightly to suit my dark purpose. I encourage any of you who are interested in what the original story might have been, or how it pertains to what I have written here, to either ask me directly or research online._

_Having said that, it shouldn't matter too much whether or not you are an expert on Norse mythology or not; everything gets explained eventually. I hope._

_Except in some cases in which an alternate spelling is more common, I use John Lindow's guide to Norse mythology for names of people and places._


	9. Chapter 9

**Of Utgardar, the Castle between the Worlds, and Its Master, part 2**

The climb up was punishing. Thor had to dismount first because the mule kept losing footing. Thjalfi soon dismounted out of solidarity, but Loki and Skrymir did only once the gradient became so steep it was actually easier to walk. They reached the top first. Skrymir stretched, drinking in the view and nibbling on his bag of sweets. Meanwhile, Loki drank in the sight of him. Their horses licked the rock and, finding there was no grass around, put up one foot and dozed moodily. Neither of them said a word and the little doubt that had formed in Loki's mind at the edge of Jarnvid was now a gut-certainty. Thor and Thjalfi caught up with them after a while, and the endless bustle started again with Loki making the fire, Thjalfi feeding the horses and Thor taking out the provisions for lunch, throwing suspicious glances at Skrymir who did nothing. They sat down to a meal of sausages, cheese and flatbread, and hunger made conversation sparse. Perhaps it was the scenery, because from up on the Border Rock a view broke onto all sides of the world, so immense that they could see the very curve of the horizon.

Finishing the last bit of their sausage, Skrymir strolled gently around the campsite, red cloak whipped by the wind. "A lovely place. Isn't it a lovely place? Wouldn't you say, Laufeyjarson? You must have some fond memories of this place."

"Some," answered Loki.

"Oh, look, you can see Jarnvid from here. Many fond memories there too, I would think," Skrymir pointed his sausage to the dark green-blue line on the edge of their view. "A very clear day indeed if we can see Jarnvid from this far in. Seems like we've stood at its edge only moments ago."

"You are mistaken, seems we've stood there a lifetime ago," Loki said pleasantly.

"Two lifetimes," Thjalfi murmured into his ear while bending over to pack the flatbread.

"Oh, the moor will give way soon," Skrymir said, deliberately misunderstanding their meaning. "We'll be in Utgard by nightfall if we make no more rests. And if the horses hold up. Eat well, goat master's son."

Loki was treated to another combined twitch from Thor and Thjalfi.

"Some fruit, Asa-Thor?" Skrymir offered. It was the last straw.

"That's quite alright," said Thor with a strained, knife thin smile on his face. "Shall we play your game now or have you thought the better of it, Skrymir?"

"The game? Oh, the game!" Skrymir clapped his hands together like an excited child. "Of course! Rules are simple, right? I stand there, you just take your time and knock me on the forehead. If I fall over, you win, alright?"

"Got it," mouthed Thor. He flicked Mjölnir from the silver chain and it immediately enlarged in his hand.

"Don't miss," Skrymir chided.

"I won't," Thor growled, standing in position. Skrymir stopped the game to fumble with his large cloak, then insisted on finishing his sausage first, offered his dried fruit to all present one more time and generally dragged the proceedings along, all of which enraged Thor until steam practically came out of his ears.

Thjalfi came to stand next to Loki and whispered, "And good riddance. Gold on the Hammer Wielder, yeah?"

"I'll take that."

"Really?" Thjalfi inclined his head. "Thor'll split his skull open."

"That is your bet, little rabbit?" Loki asked, offering his hand.

Thjalfi viewed it with suspicion, but then took it. "Alright."

Skrymir finally finished his preparations, clapped his hands and nodded to Thor. "Ready?"

Thor twirled Mjölnir in his hand skilfully, tilted and lunged forward at Skrymir with a complimentary battle cry. He caught him right on the forehead and, even suspecting what he did, Loki couldn't help but wince when the blow landed. Yet, when he looked back, Skrymir was where he'd been previously, unfazed and smiling widely. Not even his knee buckled. Thor stared in disbelief. Thjalfi whispered, "Shit," and probed around his purse to land a gold piece into Loki's proffered palm.

"Haha! That cleared the sinuses," Skrymir guffawed. "But I don't think you used your full strength, though. Come on, don't be shy, Asa-Thor! Give it all you've got!"

Thor, in utter disbelief and even angrier than before, made Mjölnir larger, took a deep breath and ran at him again. "AAAAAAAAAAAARGH!"

But the only thing that happened after the manic scream was a dull "thonk" and then more of Skrymir's laughter, harder than ever.

"I don't mean to be rude, it's just that I was expecting something a little bit more… well, more, really," Skrymir said wiping his tears and catching his breath. "Well, I suppose these things are never as impressive as the stories about them. And men are never as good lovers as they claim, isn't that right, Laufeyjarson?" he turned to Loki.

"Oh, it's been years since I've slept with a man," Loki said, unfazed. "I can't remember."

"Guhahaha!" Skrymir spurted another loud laugh. He put his dirty dish into Thjalfi's hands and nodded towards his parcel of animal skins. "Here, pack this up too, little rabbit. Hey, do they call you that because you are a fast fuck?"

"It's because I'm a quick runner," Thjalfi growled.

"Is that so? There's a dear friend of mine in Utgard, fastest runner there ever was. You should have a race," Skrymir suggested.

Thjalfi nodded stiffly. "Sure."

"Fantastic! You were a quick runner too, I seem to remember," he turned to Loki. "Would you take part?"  
"That's quite alright."

"Oh, come now. I've played with Thor, Thjalfi will race my friend. There has to be something you could compete in?" he said, leading Thor's sorrel downhill even before the speechless Thor or the moody Thjalfi could pack their belongings. "Oh, I know, eating! Do you remember the eating competitions?"

"I remember them," Loki nodded, following suit.

"You simply must take part in one of those!" Skrymir insisted.

"As you wish, Master Skrymir."

"I told you, I am no man's master."

"You are also no mother's Skrymir," Loki commented with a smirk.

"Humph," Skrymir grunted, matching Loki's grimace. "Well then, troop! After me!" he announced boomingly and they moved out.

As Loki had predicted, the trudge down the rock face was even more gruelling, so much so that even Skrymir had to shut up for a while. But the jerking around picked right up when they found themselves on flat ground again, and picking their way through the far edge of the moor. Shimmering mists started appearing here and there on the plain, moving swiftly across it like slithering spectres. Strange shapes floated around in them, and Skrymir wisely avoided leading them into a cluster. Humming, grunting sounds started echoing vaguely between the boulders, making the horses jumpy, but the pace Skrymir set would indeed bring them to Utgard before nightfall.

By the time the eastern skies became a dark purple and the young moon appeared like a crooked smile in the sky, they could see it. It was a strange, impossible structure, the same colour as the moon, built like nothing was built anywhere else – shapes flowing into other shapes like waves caught in midair, spindly pillars writhing and rubbing against each other like snakes making love. Lights sparkled from within many different places in the towers resembling doomed little fireflies caught in a white spider web. It looked as if the whole thing could be blown away by the wind to reform somewhere else as something completely different. As it indeed could.

Thjalfi fell into stride next to Loki and whispered, "This is it?"

"This is Utgard," he nodded.

"How-, who… built it?"

"A mad magician, little rabbit," Loki chuckled.

Skrymir had them ride in straight through the enormous wooden gate, held open by iron chains whose links were as thick as a man's torso. The paving stones were carved intricately, and Loki could hear the gasp when Thor realized it was a representation of the World Tree. He made flapping movements with his elbows as if that would lift the mule's feet into midair and have it no longer step onto something so sacred to the Aesir.

Skrymir dismounted and waved at them, "You go right on through! There'll be someone in the hall, I expect," and with that disappeared into a little staircase on the left side of the courtyard.

There was no one to greet them and take the horses away. Thor and Thjalfi looked to Loki for guidance. Loki shrugged, "Just leave it all here."

"And the weapons?" asked Thjalfi gripping his spear.

Loki started towards the mead hall, a glass and white marble structure reminiscent of a delicate seashell arching over their heads, translucent with light. "You won't help with yours, little rabbit. Leave it. We'll keep ours," he nodded to Thor but muttered under his breath, "And little good they will do us."

An elaborate staircase led into the main assembly room. Loki remembered having once slid down it and brained himself on the wolf carving at the end. He took a moment to indulge the senseless old habit and flicked the wolf over the head with his fingers in retaliation.

Thor level with him and keeping Thjalfi between themselves, slightly in the back, they pushed the carved doors open to be met with an absolute silence. Three giant fires, one in the middle and two on the sides, lit and heated the tall, wide hall. Between them two rows of tables led to a rise where a third one stood, perpendicular to the room, all of them filled with rows of grim men and women, dressed in armour, their various weapons within their grasp. With a start, Loki recognized one of them: Surt of Muspelheim, sitting at the head of the right table, powerful hands stretched out in front of him as if he was ready to pick the whole thing up and fling it across the room.

It was the Asgardian way to have a rectangle of tables congregating over the heating fire, and the cooking fires put elsewhere, so that all the guests could, at least in theory, talk to all the other guests and pretend to be equals. Jötnar usually made a point of showing who was boss with the seating arrangement, a finesse created for the sole purpose, Loki supposed, of giving them another thing to argue about. However, it was the rule for both peoples that nobody came to the table armed.

"So which one is Utgarda?" Thor whispered to Loki, without taking his eye off the array of bearded, brutal-looking, scowling men assembled there.  
"None of them," Loki said simply.

Frowning, Thor reached a polite distance from what he had judged to be the main table and announced in a clear voice, "I am Thor, son of Odin. These are my companions, Loki Laufeyjarson and Thjalfi of Midgard. I have come to see Loki, Lord of the Outlands. Where may I find him?"

"Usually, you can find him at his table." It was a striking-looking brunette who spoke from one of the side tables. Her azure-blue eyes burrowed into Thor like two arrows. The effect was helped by a belt of throwing daggers strapped around her chest.

"Is this not his table?" inquired Thor.

"Well, this is Utgard," the woman enunciated. "He is the Lord of Utgard. Stands to reason this would be his table."

Thor, having been poked around all day, had only a short fuse of politeness left in him and it was burning out quickly. "Look, I've had just about enough of-"

"Little Cousin!" Thor was interrupted midsentence by a cheerful voce. Loki asked the fates for strength and turned towards a young man, his head level with Loki's chin, beardless and dressed in a dark red travelling cloak which was too big for him. He was approaching them with open arms. "Little Cousin, you did not rumble me! Why not?"

"Little cousin?" mumbled Thor, trying to gain his bearing.

"You seemed unwilling to be rumbled, Uncle," Loki said.

"Uncle?" Thor inquired.

"It is good to hear you call me that," said the young man. His eyes, a shock of vivid peppermint green, collided pleasingly with his creamy, olive-coloured skin and rich brown hair.

"It's just arse kissing," said Loki, allowing himself to be embraced.

"No, I believe you have missed me," said Utgarda and touched their lips briefly together before turning to the gaping Thor and Thjalfi. "Welcome! Welcome, Thjalfi! And Thor-Thor-Son-of-Odin! A privilege. Come!"

"You are-," started Thor, trying to make sense of the scene.

"He is slow, this one," commented Utgarda. "Yes, yes, I am, and welcome to my hall." He clasped Thor's lifeless hand, shook it pro forma, then did the same to Thjalfi who managed his handshake with the Lord of the Outlands with a little bit more grace.

Thor stared at the red cloak, meant for a man twice Utgarda's size and made the connection. "But you were-"

"I was," Utgarda/Skrymir nodded. "I still am."

Loki watched as Thor took conscious control of his flapping lower jaw and started in his best official voice, "Utgarda-Loki, we have come to seek council-"

"Council?" Utgarda cut him off, voice low and frosty, even though the smile never left his youthful face. "Surely not. You've come to seek out a trail. Like dogs sniffing out a bitch."

"Dogs can't help it if the bitch is in heat," Loki answered before Thor could experience total meltdown.

"Hm," Utgarda accepted and turned to his grim guests, arms out and voice echoing. "I believe a bet is in place. Two, in fact. Listen up, my dears! Little Cousin has agreed to an eating competition."

There was a mass of ooh-s and aah-s around the room, and excited conversations broke out. From several little groups, Loki could hear a call rising to fill the hall, "Bring out Logi! Bring forth Logi!"

And just like that his stomach seemed turned into a frozen lump. He frowned, shrugged and gulped at the same time. Impossible! Not even Utgarda could-

He looked to his Uncle to see a victorious smirk, as dangerous as it was telling. Loki felt the floor open from under him before he got his breathing under control. Then he closed his eyes and enjoyed the irrational exhilaration in his chest.

"And the boy, Thjalfi here," Utgarda went on telling his court, his voice sounding distant to Loki, as if he was listening from behind a closed door, "He's in service to Thor-Thor-Son-of-Odin! Apparently he's a fast runner."

Again, the mob murmured, "Call for Hugi! Call Hugi to the hall!" Loki's belly shivered again.

Utgarda turned to their little party and said, "Well, shall we? You first, Little Cousin."

Theatrically, as he did everything, he waved to one side of the hall, to a group of warriors who pushed in a table laden with meat, fish, different pastries and vegetable dishes, one of everything on either side. Following the table was a tiny man, barely taller than a dwarf and much less muscled. Even as he looked at him, Loki could swear the man, Logi, was flickering, flaunting, fading away.

But Utgarda's enthusiasm was contagious. Always a new, crazy game, toeing the border of the totally irresponsible, and for the time, just until he remembered how to be afraid again, Loki would let that dangerous breathlessness, so close to lust, take him over.

New magic, older than the world, more powerful than power itself. And he would be shown it.

It bothered him, bothered him greatly that Utgarda was able to create the sort of magic Loki suspected he had. It bothered him even through this blind, primal excitement that made his breathing shallow. He was in the presence of something truly horrifying. He was looking at something so utterly alien, so entirely incomprehensible, that it passed by all these other people in the hall almost invisibly. Did Utgarda's court know what their master had achieved? Did they suspect what they were seeing? Or were they blind to the perfect terror like a man passing shapes in the darkness, never realizing that one of them was a sleeping dragon?

Loki pulled off his jacket and handed it to Thjalfi who came to keep it for him helpfully. "If you want your gold back, rabbit, here's your chance to bet Thor," he told him, pulling his shirtsleeves up.

"Against you or in your favour?" Thjalfi asked.

"What do you think?" Loki laughed, spreading his hands helplessly, and came to stand at the designated side of the table.

"Ready?" Utgarda, standing in the middle, asked. Loki nodded, Logi flickered. "Begin!"

Loki dug into what he liked best on the table, in no particular order, but still making an effort to eat as quickly as he could. He decided he may as well get a meal out of it. The guests that had appeared so grim previously were now cheering him on, rowdy and relaxed. Thor was at his side, hands flapping urgently as he barely kept himself from handing Loki dishes or even force-feeding him. Next to him Thjalfi was worriedly looking from Loki to the tiny Logi. Loki had the upper hand in the beginning. The practiced glutton, he had long ago learned that a man should eat when there was food, for he never knew when and if there would be food again. However, as Loki came onto his third or fourth plate of something or other, he started slowing down. Logi, on the other hand, seemed to gather speed, and in a matter of moments it was as though he didn't need to chew at all. And he didn't, not really. Whatever the case, Loki fell over laughing at his sixth plate, a splitting pain in his side, while Logi managed to finish his own twelve-courses and start on Loki's leftovers. In another few moments, there was nothing left, only eerie, black bones, sucked clean of marrow.

Loki laughed more, pulling himself up gingerly. The assembled Jötunn audience kept up a running commentary on how this must mean that his wife fed him well, no doubt in order to keep him lazy and off of her. Utgarda put a hand on Loki's back and whispered, "Not as spritely as you used to be, Little Cousin?"

"Spritely has nothing to do with it."

"Then, perhaps, not as hungry?" he said and Loki understood him to mean more than hungry for food. Before he could reply, Utgarda was back to being a showman again, announcing to Thor, "That's two to Utgard, none to you I am afraid. But now we will see little rabbit run, will we not?"

Utgarda locked hands with a wary Thjalfi and led the whole party out into the large forecourt where they would hold the race, now well lit with crystal lamps of Dark Elf making. Loki stumbled after them, Thor swooping in to prop him up.

"You've lost me gold to my servant, Horse Mother," Thor grumbled. "I've seen you eat in earnest before, where was the flare? I know you could have done better!"

Loki chuckled at him. "You don't get it, do you?"

"What?" asked Thor.  
"Never mind, Ennilang, never mind."

"The race then, come!" Utgarda's voice flew in from the centre of the square. "Twice around the courtyard, shall we say?"

Loki and Thor made their way through the crowd and came to stand next to Utgarda who was happily conversing with Surt and another large, surly man. Thjalfi had taken off his coat, pulled his shirt open and started to stretch, all the while throwing grim glances at the sickly creature next to him. Hugi, if Loki guessed correctly, looked as if he was going to keel over at any moment. He was watching Thjalfi warm up with a bewildered expression on his pale green face.

Loki's eyes locked onto Thjalfi's, who looked as if he was stuck between angry and begging for mercy. Loki tried to look supportive for the boy's benefit.

"Run it like a motherfucker or I'll have your arse personally!" Thor shouted at Thjalfi within the general bustle. Thjalfi gave him a shaky nod, threw another glance at Loki, and started to concentrate on the course.

Utgarda spread his hands, too-big sleeves billowing around his elbows. "Who will call it?" he asked his court. Armoured men and women volunteered, shouting out in glee like little children until Utgarda proclaimed, "Alright, you, my dear!" He pointed to that same striking, azure-eyed woman who had spoken out to Thor. She stepped up, all graceful curves and long legs, drew two typically Jötunn bent swords and touched them to the ground in front of both runners. Thjalfi eyed the swords nervously. Hugi seemed to be distracted by his glinting brass buttons.

"Position!" the woman said in her husky alto. "Get set! Begin!"

She drew the swords upwards and they set off, Thjalfi getting out into the lead, with Thor energetically urging him on. Down the first straight it seemed like a one horse race.

Loki noticed Utgarda watching him hungrily. He smirked and shook his head. The moment Utgarda looked back to the match Hugi sped up, caught Thjalfi, passed him and then lapped him in quick succession. He finished the course and walked off the field demurely while Thjalfi was still cornering for the second lap. There was a short pause, punctured only by Thjalfi's ragged breathing, and echoing perfectly Thor's dumb disbelief, before the crowd burst into roaring applause for Hugi who was no longer even among them.

"What, how—no!" Thor stuttered.

Utgarda was grinning at him, hanging on Thor's elbow. "I am afraid that's three for three, Thor-Thor-Son-of-Odin. Perhaps you are all hungry. Well, the two of you. I expect Little Cousin has had enough."

Thor could no longer contain himself. He burst out, "You pair me with your tricks, and race the tired! You would have sport? How about something that I am good at?"

Loki giggled and rubbed his face. After all, who would expect less of the Thunder Bearer? He was right to have brought him along.

"I thought you were supposed to be good at smashing things with a hammer," said Utgarda, quirking an eyebrow. "But alright. What are you good at then? What is he good at, Little Cousin?"

"Drinking," Loki shrugged.

"He is the strongest among the Aesir!" Thjalfi exclaimed, wiping the sweat on his face and chest with his shirt.

"Is he!" Utgarda cheered up no end, and with it an avalanche of quips and comments from the crowd began again.

Loki edged to Thjalfi and said, "Little rabbit, we won't bet again now that you've learned the trick."

"Never mind you," Thjalfi confided in a low voice. "I'm betting Thor."

"Drinking and strength?" Utgarda spoke over the crowd. "I think we can arrange that. To the hall!"

As the party of cheering Jötnar moved back into the hall, some forgetting they were supposed to look menacing and leaving their weapons lying helter-skelter in the courtyard, Thor came up to Loki and Thjalfi and growled, "I've had enough of this horseshit!"

"Keep your cool," Loki said, watching Thor strip his jacket and doublet as if he had a personal vendetta against them.

"Fuck my cool! That cunt is asking for it!"

"He is, Ennilang. But that cunt can take it."

"Not if I ram Mjölnir up so high it comes out his fucking mouth!" Thor shouted and took off for the hall at an aggressive pace.

"You honestly don't get it, do you?" Loki said after him, but Thor only threw up his muscled arms and stomped up the stairs.

"What isn't he getting?" Thjalfi asked as they followed suit.

"You neither, little rabbit?" smiled Loki, flicking the wolf-carving in passing. "Who did I compete against?"

"Biggest fucking pig I've ever-

"What was his name?"

"Logi," answered Thjalfi matter-of-factly.

"What does Logi mean?"

"Fire?"

Loki nodded. "Wildfire. Do you see it now?"

Loki didn't think he would. As far as he knew, Thjalfi's only training in magic was what he overheard Loki tell Thor about it. But the look of confusion on the boy's face changed into a look of enlightenment and then a look of horror.

"And I raced-," he whispered, standing at the door into the hall.

"Yes."

"But… How, how is that even—"

"I don't know," Loki growled, looking into the hall where Utgarda was chattering happily around Thor. "I've never seen it done before. Uncle has learned some new tricks, it would appear."

Thjalfi cocked an eyebrow at him, but Loki shook his head and dismissed him to watch what would surely be the third act of Utgarda's spectacular show. He anchored one hip onto the edge of the raised table, slightly away from all the excitement and observed as another very pretty woman brought in a gold-studded drinking horn. The word SJOR was carved into the side of it, and Loki chuckled for Utgarda was going to convince Thor to try and drink down the sea in one gulp, just as he'd had Loki try to out-consume Wildfire itself, and Thjalfi outrun Thought. The real trouble was how had he done it? How had he captured the essence of these abstract beings and given them bodies? The level of magic implied was not even conceived of. Loki felt his cheerful mood drip away like an icicle melting onto his stomach, as he knew it would eventually have to do. If the Jötnar got their hands on this kind of power – not here in the politically inert Outlands, but in the interior – could they not believe themselves invincible and once more take arms against their old foes? All it took was a pretentious young leader, as Loki once was, and a fire he and the Alfödr may not be able to extinguish would be lit.

Loki looked to Surt who was laughing in congregation with some friends. Loki knew, as Odin had seen it in Mimir's Well, that at Ragnarök Surt would bring fire that would eventually swallow the dead bodies in all the nine worlds until it finally ate itself. He also knew that Surt the Firebringer's opponent would be Frey, the commander of Life, and that the two would kill each other. What if Surt learned to fashion this fire into a man? What if that was how it would be unleashed? What if Utgarda's magic as Loki had witnessed it tonight was the first link in the chain that would lead them to the End Time, the small thread sticking out of the tapestry that would eventually reduce it to an incomprehensible ball of thread?

As Thor took the horn in his hands and raised it to his lips, Loki prayed that Angrboda was right, and Utgarda knew better than to share this knowledge easily. Or at all.

Thor gulped powerfully. Predictably, he could hardly lower the level of the sea no matter how much he sucked on it, and Utgarda commented, "Well, perhaps it is not your drink," in a dry tone, much to the amusement of all.

"You!" shouted Thor, spluttering. "You've done something to that horn! Give me something straightforward! Give me to fucking lift or bend or-"

"Lift?" inquired Utgarda. "What if you strained your back, how would Little Cousin face Grimnir then?"

"With my sincerest apologies," said Loki from across the room.

"Then we mustn't strain you too much," Utgarda pointed his finger at something on the floor of the hall. "There, lift the cat."

Thor opened and closed his mouth, wild eyed. "The fuck-, the cat?"

"No, don't fuck the cat, for the love of mother and child!" Utgarda gasped. "Just lift it up."

Fuming, Thor walked up to the extremely grumpy-looking grey cat and clasped his hands around its narrow chest. Loki inclined his head, wondering what the cat was doubling for. This time there were no obvious clues. Thjalfi was clearly wondering the same thing, for he looked up to Loki's perch and tilted his head inquisitively. Loki went down to the crowd for a better look.

Thor was ridiculous, growling and grunting and pulling the cat that mewled at him unhappily. The only thing he'd managed was to get its arse off the floor, its four padded little feet remaining stubbornly planted on the marble. His muscles were bulging, veins pushing against his skin. By this time, the cat was in no better condition, hissing viciously and probably having trouble breathing under Thor's grip. Its front right leg lifted off the ground for a blink of an eye, but then Thor keeled over, gasping for breath. The cat arched its back, puffed up, and then ran away from the leering crowd.

"Well, that's rather put a damper on our evening," Utgarda was ready with his prickly summation. "We should stop these games before you really get hurt."

Predictably, Thor recoiled off the floor immediately. "Fuck no! You- That cat- Fuck no!"

"Really, I will think no less of you for it, Thor-Thor-Son-of-Odin!" Utgarda said, hand on Thor's shoulder. Then he added in a mumble, "I _could_ think no less of you…"

"He should have let him fuck the cat, then," Loki whispered to Thjalfi, while Thor threatened to pop a vein.

"No! One more! Wrestling match! I will wrestle anyone in your hall!" Thor thundered.

Utgarda pretended to mull it over before finally announcing, "Oh, very well then. One last match. Elli, my love, come on up!"

Thjalfi stopped laughing long enough to think about what Elli was. "Fuck me. You think he'll notice?" he asked Loki.

"You want to make that bet, little rabbit?"

"No."

Heads turned as an old woman hobbled in, bony, toothless and leaning on a cane.

Thor began his outraged protest immediately, "I'm not going to wrestle an old woman-"

"Thor-Thor-Son-of-Odin, you've failed to lift a cat. An old woman might be all you can handle," Utgarda shook his head.

Thor, red in the face, said nothing in response, just took his position in the ring of cheering spectators. Elli also took her position then spent a few moments looking around helplessly until some thoughtful young Jötunn offered to take her cane. Rather smoothly, she dumped her coat on him as well and then came to stand in front of Thor, hands up to receive his. Utgarda counted them down and the match began. Naturally, Thor could not move her no matter how much he twisted to catch her off balance and flip her to the floor. Elli, Old Age itself, stood immobile, unchanged. Thor tried to take advantage of his superior height, pushing on her from above and for a second Elli's knee seemed to tremble, as if it would buckle. Loki's eyebrows went way up but in the very next moment Elli unbalanced Thor and in a blitzing move had him sliding over the floor and into people's feet. Just like all the other competitors before her, she left the scene without a single word. Those were provided in copious amounts by Utgarda's courtiers, every snide comment falling on Thor's ears like molten iron on bare skin.

Loki looked to his Uncle with a pleading expression. Utgarda nodded slowly, for the moment deep in thought.

"That is enough, my dears, that is truly enough! After all, our guests have still not sat down with us, shared smoke and drink. We are being rude."

The courtiers immediately agreed, some even stepping up to pat Thor on the back. He was still sitting where he'd fallen, head down and scowling at the world.

"You…"

"Yes, Thor-Thor-Son-of-Odin?"

"What was that woman?"

"Elli," Utgarda answered, crouching to be level with Thor's face. "Old Age, my friend."

"What?"

"You wrestled Old Age impersonated, Ennilang," Loki explained, offering his hand for Thor to get up.

"Haha, he is slow, but I like him," Utgarda said. "You did well, even if you didn't get the trick, Asa-Thor. You did get it, though, Little Cousin. Well done again." As he spoke he started strolling over to a table at the side where some of his guests had made a place for him. It should have come as no surprise that the hall-master of this place did not see the need to sit at the hall-master's table.

"You didn't leave clues as to what the cat was, though," Loki called after him. "What cannot be lifted? The storm clouds? One's own guilt?"

"Your son," Utgarda said over his shoulder.

"Fenrir?" asked Loki hoarsely. He remembered the horror he'd felt before and realized it was nothing. This was the real thing now, this frozen eternity.

"Your second son," Utgarda said, walking backwards and pointing at Thor. "And you lifted him a bit, Thor-Thor-Son-of-Odin, had me worried there for a second. Now go drink, go get merry! It's a feast, isn't it?"

With that Utgarda dismissed them, Thjalfi, Thor and Loki, all three of them no doubt looking pale and mortified. They found a seat on the edge of the main table and sat there in silence for a while, each recovering from their trial. Loki's head was abuzz. He couldn't think, so he drank trying to drown that hollow cavity he felt open in this chest. More than that, he shouldn't think about what he saw, not just yet. Not about Wildfire caught in the body of a flickering man, or about Thought, running the courtyard. Not about the sea captured in a drinking horn, and not about Old Age throwing Thor across the floor; but most of all he shouldn't think about Jörmungand. Of course Utgarda left the cat with no clue as to what it was. He wanted Loki to ask. And like an idiot, he asked.

* * *

_All the dramatic episodes and characters here are copyright of traditional Scandinavian and Icelandic tales, as found in the Poetic and Prose Edda, and some other sources. However, some are reinterpreted or changed slightly to suit my dark purpose. I encourage any of you who are interested in what the original story might have been, or how it pertains to what I have written here, to either ask me directly or research online._

_Having said that, it shouldn't matter too much whether or not you are an expert on Norse mythology or not; everything gets explained eventually. I hope._

_Except in some cases in which an alternate spelling is more common, I use John Lindow's guide to Norse mythology for names of people and places._


	10. Chapter 10

**Of Utgardar, the Castle between the Worlds, and Its Master, part 3**

Loki dipped his nose into a goblet of something soothingly alcoholic. The hall was bustling with life, helpfully distracting him. Some people were congregating to play a dice game on one side; a group around Surt started their own eating competition, which was turning by the moment into more of a drinking competition. Most of the guests had their armour off by this time, finding it too hot, their weapons forgotten and lying scattered around the room. Several men and women picked up instruments and started to play a series of fast-paced songs with appropriately impertinent lyrics.

Thor and Thjalfi started eating moodily while Loki sipped his drink, all with different degrees of scowls on their faces. However, it was difficult to resist the atmosphere, and after Loki thoroughly explained to Thor what had been done to him, he relaxed a bit and the three of them started to make quips at each other, enjoying the rather excellent selection of alcohol. Some of the other guests braved conversation and within half an hour Loki's pipe, practically bending from the amount of hemp he'd stuffed into it, was travelling between seven people on their side of the table, while Thjalfi got some of them to teach him a Jötunn card game. Loki knew for a fact that Thjalfi had already mastered that game, seeing how it was Loki who had taught it to him in the first place. The little rabbit would have his fellow players down to their bare backs by the end of the evening. Thor, who was demonstrably a dismal gambler, got into a strangely technical discussion with a young Jötunn man who was fascinated with ship building. Loki knew that Thor had a mind for woodwork, but not that he could talk so convincingly about it and stored the information away for when he next needed to make fun of the man.

It was just a gathering of merry people, these were just happy moments of chance encounters, and this was just another mead hall. Loki desperately wanted to believe that, just for a while. If he wished for it hard enough, the world outside may vanish. This was the main attraction of the Outlands; also their greatest peril. Utgarda had chosen to distance himself from everything, be a master in a place that could not be governed, and therefore put himself out of the reach of petty spite, strife and warmongering. Loki had spent many months here, sometimes with his brothers, sometimes without them. Always with his mother. Because Utgarda did indeed love his mother since she was a little girl, and he called her Nal, the Needle, as was his privilege. Loki called him Uncle not because he was, but because he was the closest thing he had to one. There were indeed plenty of happy memories he had in connection to this hall. There were plenty of other ones too, however.

Loki looked over to where Utgarda was sitting, a delicate redhead perched on his lap while he spoke to some people. He'd told Thor Utgarda was capricious and dangerous, but it could be he was the most constant thing there was, the most safe, for he was the way he was now since the day Loki had met him, never changing with the times. Never changing in spite of the times, in fact. Perhaps it was because he had already been through one destruction of the world and ever since then he could let go of this and any other one much more easily. As easily as breathing, it seemed to Loki.

Thjalfi won his first game, endearing himself to his fellow gamblers who were impressed by his quick wit. In the meanwhile, Thor had found that the people of the Outlands had heard a corrupted version of his brief engagement to Thrym and started to make awkward explanations that concealed more than they revealed. Loki felt a nasty smile spread over his face. Thor saw it and tried to quickly change the subject but to no avail. Loki began a long, detailed account of Thor's experiences as a woman until the crowd was buckling over with laughter.

"Oh, I heard that story," came a happy voice. It was Utgarda, standing over their table, wide smile on his face. The young Jötnar picked up their drinks and took their conversations, as well as Thjalfi, elsewhere without Utgarda having said a single word to them. It was unobtrusive but definite. Utgarda would speak to his two special guests alone.

He pulled a vacated chair and sat opposite them, one foot up to his chin, his back to the room. "Was everything explained to you, Asa-Thor?"

"More or less," Thor said. His voice was careful as he deliberately sobered up expecting a new trap.

"You drank the sea, stood your ground against Old Age and almost lifted the Midgard Serpent," Utgarda bequeath Loki an ironic nod. "Not at all bad for one day, I would think."

Thor mulled it over and asked, "And how did you survive getting hit in the head with Mjölnir?"

"I redirected the blows," Utgarda answered simply. "You'll see the craters on your return journey, I expect. It was warping magic, Thunder Bearer, has Little Cousin never explained it to you?"  
"I tried," Loki commented.

"We don't use magic that much," Thor said. He had elected not to say something more impertinent, like "we have no use for such tricks" but his tone implied it.

"But you do," Utgarda said. "You use your own brand of it."

"That's different.

"Different, yes, that's what I said," Utgarda shrugged. "Nevertheless, the Sigfödr uses this type of magic as well."  
Thor shrugged. "That's the Sigfödr."

"Not _this_ type of magic, no," Loki put in.

Utgarda cocked his head at him, a complex smile on his face. "What did you see tonight, Little Cousin?"  
"Something I will not see ever again, I hope."

"You would not learn?"  
"I-," Loki stuttered. "I would…"

He tried to settle his thoughts. It was a test; Utgarda was not offering to teach him the new magic. But if he did, would Loki want to know it? The ability to recreate the characteristics of something, even something abstract, a concept, a phenomenon, and bind it onto flesh? The idea horrified him. His rational mind told him it was better not to know it, better not to pour himself that poisonous drink. Yet his quivering belly shouted, give it to me!

Did he want to have that power? Oh, yes! Like he wanted his next drink, his next meal; like he wanted to feel a woman again, like he wanted to continue breathing.

"I want it. Because I want it," he said very carefully. "I would not trust myself with it. Give it to me when I would no longer ask for it."

While Thor condensed his face into a confused expression, Utgarda smirked knowingly. "Then you truly are less hungry than you were before. Well done again, Little Cousin. You are passing all my little tests today. Tell me, how did you know me as Skrymir?"

"You interfered with my sight, so I knew you were someone who knew what they were doing. But it occurred to me it may in fact be you when you pulled out the dried fruit."

"The fruit?" Thor and Utgarda both asked at the same time.

"You love sweet things," Loki said, nodding to Utgarda's cup, filled even now to the brim with honey brandy.

Utgarda laughed loudly, and for a change without undertones. "The fucking fruit, ha!"

"Speaking of," Thor put in. "What did you do with that bag? That was sealed with magic as well, wasn't it?"  
Utgarda stared at him a while. "No," he whispered. "No, Asa-Thor. That was just a bag of dried fruit."

"But, but-," Thor mumbled while Loki and Utgarda giggled at him. "But why did you do all of this anyway? Why humiliate us, why fucking-"

"To teach you."  
"About magic?"  
"About how dangerous it is to go to an opponent expecting them to pit themselves against your strengths, instead of play you off against their own," said Utgarda slowly. "I could no more survive a blow from Mjölnir than I could bottle the night sky. That is, unless I change the rules of the game. That was your lesson, Thor-Thor-Son-of-Odin."

"And what was mine?" asked Loki.

"I am still deciding that, Little Cousin," whispered Utgarda. "You have proven to me you have become wiser. Perhaps I will not dare teach you anything."

Loki raised his glass in an ironic salute and they both drank the contents. The mead hall was rowdier than ever before. As the three of them drank in ponderous silence and Loki filled his pipe once more, they observed the goings-on. Thjalfi was with the serious gamblers now and skinning them alive by the look of it. The musicians were seated on a bench, still playing hard even though they were all sweaty and breathless. Some people have come out into the middle of the hall to dance with more or less dignity. The striking brunette was among them, laughing and spinning around, her hair catching golden glints from the fire.

"The fine leaf, is it, Little Cousin?" Utgarda inquired.

"It is," Loki nodded, lighting the pipe and passing it to him.

Utgarda took a few mouthfuls and held his breath, giving the pipe over to Thor.

"And this is how we all become friends, is it not, Thor-Thor-Son-of-Odin?"

"We would be, if you would just call me Thor, Lord of the Outlands," Thor smiled sharply.

"Thor, Lord of the Outlands?" Utgarda quirked his eyebrows. "You would depose me?"

Thor accompanied his sigh with a defeated giggle.

"We call him Thrym's Bride nowadays," Loki put in, exhaling smoke.

Thor flicked him on the temple. "As you say, Horse Mother."

Utgarda laughed at both of them. "But I have never seen you like this, Little Cousin. Do you know, Asa-Thor, that Laufeyjarson never made friends very easily despite all of his charm?"

"I would think it was because of his charm that he couldn't make friends," commented Thor. "His very particular charm."

"It's an acquired taste," Loki mumbled.

"He rarely let people acquire it. They were allowed only as far as Little Cousin wanted them to venture, no further," said Utgarda. "To see him thus in the company of one of the Aesir, who would have guessed it back in the old days?"

Loki stared up at Utgarda, careful of what he might say next. Thor too became tense. He set down his cup and said, "Stranger things have been known to happen. Rarely those with better outcomes."

Utgarda let his eyebrows climb up and said, "Stranger things, granted. You coming to my hall may be one of them."

"You turning out to be Lord of the Outlands another," Thor said.

Utgarda's expression was one of honest surprised. "Why is that so strange?"

Thor shrugged. "You seem… young."

"Do you truly believe my appearance has anything to do with my age?" inquired Utgarda, all of his features sharpening, as if his concentrated intelligence was bringing them to a point. "Or his for that matter?" he nodded towards Loki.

"I know you can change at will…" Thor started insecurely.

"Not all of us," Loki commented.

"The appearance is our magic, and our youth is our magic. But not a trick," Utgarda told Thor. "Have you ever wondered, Thor-Thor-Son-of-Odin, why Little Cousin does not partake in the eating of Idunn's apples?"

Thor shrugged. "He does not need them."

"Why?" Utgarda asked, leaning closer, a penetrating look in his eyes. "Or put this way, how long do you think Jötnar live?"

Thor's eyebrows went down even further on his face, trying to piece the conversation together, trying to think through the inebriation. Loki drank his beer, watching Utgarda carefully.

"As long as they can, Odinson," Utgarda answered. "As long as they want to, as long as there is something to live for. A passion, a promise. A curiosity," he nodded to Loki and added in a lower voice. "An anger." The word rang ominously, hanging for a moment between them until Utgarda went on, "Jötnar live as long as they have the will for it, because will and life used to be one and the same back in the beginning. You must take the will if you wish to kill us."

"We die in battle just like any other creature, or poisoned, or stabbed in the back," Loki said slowly.

"A defeat is a defeat of the will no matter by what method it was dealt. If it was dealt properly."

Thor thought it over seriously. Loki could tell by the way his furrowed brow almost touched the edge of his goblet while he drank. "So why did that guy want the apples, Skadi's father?"

"To blackmail you," Loki said quickly, the half-truth he had told so many times it became a knee-jerk response.

Utgarda cocked his head, another testing smile on his face. "It was Little Cousin that wanted them," he mouthed slowly and deliberately, savouring Loki's darkening expression.

"What?" asked Thor.

"To reignite will, and incite life," Utgarda said. He caressed the border of his glass. The pipe lay forgotten on the table between them. "But that plan went wrong, did it not, Little Cousin?"

"It went very badly wrong," growled Loki quietly. "And I fixed my mistake."

"What did you want the apples for?" Thor inquired, turning towards him.

"For my wife," Loki said.

"Sigyn?"

"No, you dumb fuck. My first wife."

Utgarda nodded. "Angrboda had given up the will, and decided she would sleep. Little Cousin was not ready to grant her rest. So he tried to get Idunn to share her apples with his Iron-born lover. He needed help with his plan, though. And the help proved…"

"Unhelpful," Loki finished the sentence.

"I did not know that story," Thor commented, forehead grooved.

Utgarda took a sip of his drink. "I'll wager there are plenty of stories Little Cousin hadn't told you about himself."

"Not as many as you make it out to be," Loki said.

"He's always refused to tell me anything about his first wife," Thor put in demurely, dipping his nose into his ale once again.

"And you've never dared to ask about his children?" said Utgarda, his peppermint coloured eyes glinting yellow and burrowing into Thor, but before Thor could say anything in response, the look softened. "Never mind, I'll tell you about Angrboda. What would you know?"

Thor thought it over, gazing at Loki. "What did she look like?"

Loki grunted, "That's your big questions about my wife, Ennilang? What she looked like? Fuck, I would've told you that."

Utgarda laughed. "Dark haired, fierce, you'd like her. A bit like Jarnsaxa, in fact."

"Who?" Thor asked.

"The girl at my table you'd been boning long-distance for the last hour, Thor-Thor-Son-of-Odin," Utgarda said, turning around to point at the azure-eyed brunette.

"I wasn't-," Thor began to stutter, but Loki was faster, setting down his drink in outrage. "She looked nothing like her!"

Utgarda waved his hand above his head and ignored him. "Angrboda was a sorceress, born in Jarnvid. The Iron Wood, I believe you passed it, yes? But not through it. Angrboda used to come to court here, which is where Little Cousin met her. She knew the Old Script and Loki went to her to learn it."

"So he went to seduce her and trick her secrets out of her?" Thor surmised with a smirk at Loki.

"Pretty much," nodded Utgarda. "But Angrboda was not the sort who gave secrets up for a little screwing."

"There was nothing little about our screwing," Loki said, showing his teeth to Utgarda. "And I never expected to trick anything out of her. She just taught me what she would teach me when I asked her to. Anything else you want to know, Goat Master?"

Thor obviously enjoyed having Loki grilled for a change. A mischievous look on his face, he purred, "How did she like to be fucked?"

"Well," Loki snarled at him. "And by me."

"Little Cousin gets prickly when you touch his heart, didn't you know, Thor-Thor-Son-of-Odin?" snickered Utgarda.

"I did," Thor nodded. "But he forgives if you do it gently."

"Maybe he forgives you…"

Thor quirked an eyebrow at that remark, took a gulp of his drink and fixed Utgarda. His voice was strangely soft and coy. "And are you truly not his father?"

"Pardon?" Utgarda said.

"Is it truly not you who sired him, as he keeps telling us?" Thor repeated.

For a moment, Loki was ready to grab him and make a run for it for there was a fleeting shadow on Utgarda's face, so brief he doubted Thor even saw it. Utgarda ran his little finger across his lower lip but then the smile came back, even if it was still quite sharp around the edges. "No. I am not," he said, little finger feeling its way around the words. "All of Nal's children were Farbauti's children."

"Very well," Thor nodded, satisfied that he'd made the hall-master uncomfortable, a justified retaliation for that entire day.

Apparently, Utgarda took it to be justified as well for his face went back to his usual whimsical softness and youth. All the penetrating, needling sharpness was gone and Loki understood this to mean their interview was over for the time.

Utgarda relit Loki's pipe, then for the first time noticed what it was made of. He pursed his lips appreciatively and started handling it with a bit more respect, taking a drag and passing it to its owner. Exhaling, he turned back to look at the room of dancers, gamblers, drunkards and all the other misfits who preferred a simple life in a chaotic world rather than a difficult one in an ordered world. As the thought occurred to Loki, he sat back into his chair in wonderment. Why had he never made that trade? Not now – now it was impossible, there was too much anchoring him to what lay beyond the grasslands. But before, when he had no wives, no children, no blood-brothers; back when Utgarda offered it.

Hunger. It was the hunger.

"She is pretty, though, isn't she?" Utgarda mumbled for Thor was staring at the brunette, Jarnsaxa, again. "Lovely, luscious, lascivious hair, makes you want to wrap yourself up in it."

"Hmm," Thor said weakly.

"Eyes like the warm seas. Lovely complexion, too," Utgarda went on. "Fucks like an eel."

Thor spluttered and became slightly redder in the face. "Oh."

Loki chuckled. "An eel? Might have to try that out."

"You wouldn't steal your friend's fire like that, would you, Little Cousin?"

"As soon as look at him," Loki said and got up from the table to join the group that Jarnsaxa was momentarily sitting down with, fanning herself. Thor waited but a heartbeat before rising to follow. They heard Utgarda laugh after them. It didn't matter. For a while at least they would drink, dance, fuck and fall over exhausted. The ordered world, so very disorderly with its colliding rules and horrific complexity, would wait for them when they were done.

Hunger, he had learned a lesson about hunger.

* * *

_All the dramatic episodes and characters here are copyright of traditional Scandinavian and Icelandic tales, as found in the Poetic and Prose Edda, and some other sources. However, some are reinterpreted or changed slightly to suit my dark purpose. I encourage any of you who are interested in what the original story might have been, or how it pertains to what I have written here, to either ask me directly or research online._

_Having said that, it shouldn't matter too much whether or not you are an expert on Norse mythology or not; everything gets explained eventually. I hope._

_Except in some cases in which an alternate spelling is more common, I use John Lindow's guide to Norse mythology for names of people and places._


	11. Chapter 11

**Of Utgardar, the Castle between the Worlds, and Its Master, part 4**

In the end, Loki set it up so that Thor would have Jarnsaxa. He all but sat her in his lap. It was not without a little regret – she was indeed very much his type. Volatile, as Angrboda had put it. Utgarda had a point when he said the two were alike, Loki was willing to admit. Still, it gave him pleasure to watch the stubborn woman thaw slowly under Thor's unobtrusive, guileless charm. Seeing the two of them on the right track, he sought out Thjalfi and was immediately invited to a game, much to Thjalfi's dismay, who had an entirely human idea of the worth of gold, and was almost as loathe to part with it as Dwarves were. Surrounded by the Jötnar for whom gold was just something to gamble away, he was swimming in gravy until Loki showed up and evened the odds a bit.

After he'd released Thjalfi to rearrange his ruffled feathers, on a whim Loki walked over to Surt to speak to him. Surt welcomed him warmly, making a place in the middle of his drunken little company. Some of the people there vaguely knew who he was and were eager to learn about life in the distant Asgard. He told them light-hearted stories about drinking, feasting, challenges, sex and Vana poppy-snot, and felt his own heart become light from the recollections. He still kept an eye on where Utgarda's was, and watched not to get stupid drunk, aware that there would be a third talk, this time just between him and his Uncle. But not yet; Utgarda's cheerful, innocent self-indulgence told him the night was still dark and needed to be lit, not contemplated endlessly.

Somewhere during Loki's storytelling, a lovely, zaftig girl, hair like tightly wound bronze wire, made room for herself next to him. She nodded her pretty head at every word, drinking them in like honeyed wine. She was young, silly and easy, and he was happy to find that the hair between her legs was the same, charming consistency and colour as the one on her head. He left her asleep on a cushioned bench in one of the corridors and only realized how long he'd been with her when the mead hall greeted him with silence. The fires remained unstoked, and were reduced to warm, crackling embers. Yet Loki could see his way through the mix of benches, plates, weapons, clothing and people: the end of a battle in which none died. Dawn was breaking on the East, and the Outlands grudgingly accepted its light, like a petulant child that hated the fact it was doing as advised. He spotted Thjalfi, head on the breasts of a very tall girl and happily asleep. Surt slept with one foot on the table. Thor and Jarnsaxa had disappeared long ago and apparently did not return. Loki supposed he would have to go and find the man eventually.

Some guests were still awake, but only barely, speaking in hushed voices if at all. Loki scanned the little cliques, looking for the person he was now most pressed to see and speak to but the Lord of the Outlanders was not among the stirring members of his court. Loki smirked.

Utgarda was at the head of his table, isolated and untouchable, seated in the biggest chair as he was supposed to have been from the beginning. An obvious place to look for the hall-master, really. With the large windows coloured silver behind him, he looked majestic and Loki remembered all the hidden admiration he'd felt for his Uncle throughout his life.

When he saw Loki had clocked him, Utgarda got up and walked off to one of the big corridors to the left. Loki followed up several staircases and through a few rooms, large and private; obviously his Uncle's own. He finally found him out on the balcony, high up above the strange scenery. In the distance, the horizon became torn to pieces, and flickering shapes appeared on it; things from dreams. Loki breathed in and waited to get used to the view.

"And you accused _me_ of liking to dangle my feet from high place," he commented lightly after a while.

"Hm," Utgarda smirked. "Maybe the Asgard stories are true and you inherited that love from me."

Loki made no reply to the provocation, just came up to the railing looking out over the vastness of not-world, for that is where the view stretched. For a moment, it reminded him of Hel's rooms that looked over the Ginunnga Gap.

Next to him, Utgarda was sombre, pensive. Immobile, his face looked its age. There were no wrinkles and grooves, no scars like there were on the Alfödr's face. In fact, Odin seemed somehow young in comparison. Odin looked more earthly, Loki corrected himself, for Utgarda seemed not even alive. The smoothness of his skin was transformed into an unnatural hardness; his large, opalescent eyes, like jewels glinting from the back of a skull. Loki, slightly out of his mind perhaps, touched his Uncle's cheek to make sure it was still flesh, and pliable. Utgarda looked at him in surprise. It was enough. The face was reanimated and Loki could breathe again.

"I may not have inherited it from you, but I may have learned it from you," he spoke softly. "It's not about dividing yourself from the rest of what is going on, the opposite. There's nobody up here but you, peering over the edge. High places force you to take yourself into consideration, with all your flaws."

Utgarda smiled, eyes narrowed. "There is a strange peace up here. A reconciliation with death, maybe."

"As you've told Thor, we do not need to reconcile with death," Loki commented.

"Oh, but we do!" Utgarda said. No more lazy musings or internal monologue; there was suddenly something urgent about his voice. "This will be my lesson to you, Little Cousin. We must all reconcile with death."  
Loki inclined an eyebrow, half-expecting still that it would all turn it into a joke, but he was met with an uncharacteristic firmness.

"Nothing, not even the world," Utgarda said, "has the stomach for forever. Not without changing into something unlike itself, unthinking or unfeeling or both. Everything ought to reconcile with death. You must reconcile with death."

"Death is not what I fear," Loki said, staring at the horizon.

"I know. And Fear is not what I speak of, Nal's son. Your anger is what you must learn to let go."

"I am not angry with death," he said, staring at Utgarda with surprise.

"But you mean your own, Little Cousin," Utgarda retorted, the urgent tone reaching his eyes. "You must reconcile with all of death."

Loki mulled it over, trying to understand everything that his Uncle was telling him. "Are you telling me to lay down for it, like Angrboda?"

"Lay down for what, Little Cousin?"

"For the future. For the End Time! She told me it's damned if you do, damned if you don't."

"Ha, dear Iron-bred," breathed the Lord of the Outlands. "Why a woman that wise ever married you, I have no idea. Are you really that good a lay?"

They both chuckled, acknowledging the fact that somewhere else, in another time, they had a sense of humour. But they could afford none in this place, this high up, where they had to contend with themselves.

"That is not what I am telling you," Utgarda said. "I am just telling you to make peace with the fact that it may come."

"You can say that, standing by in this not-place, bleeding for nothing and no one. But how can you ask that sort of betrayal from the rest of us?" Loki said. He felt a strangling bitterness in his throat when he remembered how he'd accused Angrboda of running away from the world. He was doing it again. How was it that everybody else seemed to be able to let go of those things which should have been the essence of what made or unmade them? Was it that everyone was too weak, or was he the last stubborn fool?

"I am not all in one place. I am pieced," he tried to explain, thinking of his children, of Sigyn, of all that would befall them if the End Time arrived. He gripped his chest, the stones inside conking against each other, fighting for room. "I can live with the death of this piece here, but the other ones I cannot let go."

Utgarda nodded heavily and reached out to brush a strand of Loki's hair away from his face. "And it is precisely that sort of thinking which almost started the End Time before, is it not, Little Cousin?" he said heavily, referring to the theft of Asgard's life-source, Loki's involvement in which was a secret even to Odin.

Loki smirked. "As I said. Damned if you do, damned if you don't."

Utgarda returned the smirk but only barely. He sighed as if he was exhaling all of creation and looked back out to the horizon. "Ah, but I am tired, Little Cousin," he said in a tortured whisper. "There is no more room on my skin."

"Do not say such things," Loki breathed.

Utgarda shook his head slowly and changed the subject, the one that Loki had come for, a lifetime ago, "I did not give the tablets to Thrym's mother. Do you believe me?"

"I believe you."

"Huh, really?" Utgarda-Loki huffed with a testing glance. "Well, whatever the case, I didn't. I can guess who did."

"Who did?" Loki frowned.

"It's not important. But you should read them."

"What?" Loki asked. "Why?"

"So that your son may have a life," Utgarda said quietly.

"What do you mean?"

"Read the tablets," the master of the ungovernable ordered. "Today I bound Thought and Old Age and Wildfire and the Sea. But the cat was the real test, Laufeyjarson. Do you not see it?" His peppermint green eyes found Loki's as if willing him to think, to know. "Your son lived in that cat. It was not just his attributes, it was his will, if for a brief moment. Give your children time to travel, give them time in the world and perhaps you will yet avert what the Father Slayer foresees."

Loki could hardly breathe, only listen as the once again distant and closed figure in the red cloak went on, "Soothe them, give them lives among other men. The tablets will teach you how. You have a remnant of their magic, do you not?"

Loki thought of the dagger that he'd used to erase the Old Script from the doorway of Thrym's treasure chamber. "I do," he said, hypnotized.

"Then do it," Utgarda nodded decisively. "Seek them out. Learn them. And if you are successful I may linger to see my littlest cousins freed."

A way to give his son's bodies outside their own, a way for Hel to smell the actual spring. His mind floated, unable to grasp the concepts, or afraid to touch them, terrified they would burst from the pressure like so many bubbles of soap.

"Thank you, Uncle," Loki managed to whisper and embraced the old, old man in front of him. Utgarda seemed a bit surprised at first but then relaxed into Loki's arms. They kissed lightly and fleetingly on the mouth. Any more would break them in half.

"Now take your two pets and away with you. And tell Thor-Thor-Son-of-Odin that I would welcome him into my halls again someday," Utgarda ordered and shooed him off.

Loki graced him with an ironic bow and went back into the warm shadow of the hall to collect his travel companions, as bid. Unable to help himself, however, he stopped in the doorway and looked back. "Uncle?"

"Yes?"

"Who gave Hadda the tablets?"

Utgarda smiled wearily. "It does not matter. You do not need to look for her, and I hope she never finds you either."

* * *

_All the dramatic episodes and characters here are copyright of traditional Scandinavian and Icelandic tales, as found in the Poetic and Prose Edda, and some other sources. However, some are reinterpreted or changed slightly to suit my dark purpose. I encourage any of you who are interested in what the original story might have been, or how it pertains to what I have written here, to either ask me directly or research online._

_Having said that, it shouldn't matter too much whether or not you are an expert on Norse mythology or not; everything gets explained eventually. I hope._

_Except in some cases in which an alternate spelling is more common, I use John Lindow's guide to Norse mythology for names of people and places._


	12. Chapter 12

**Of the New Elder Magic and Thjazi's Daughter, part 1**

The trip back into Jötunheim was quiet and quick thanks to Loki being abuzz with the thoughts in his head, and his two companions being incredibly hung over. He'd led them out immediately after Utgarda dismissed him, just in case the capricious Lord thought of something else to teach all of them. Thjalfi he found still asleep on the table, still attached to the tall, lithe girl who only grunted when Loki finally managed to get the drowsy Thjalfi upright and pointed towards the exit. Thor, who had been spirited away by his Jötunn eel, was a harder find. Loki braved what he remembered had served as guest rooms in Utgarda's castle. By pure chance, he stumbled on Jarnsaxa's chambers after only three tries, finding his friend happily captive beneath her long limbs. Thor was even more loathe to get going than Thjalfi. He and Loki engaged in a vicious tug-o'-war until Jarnsaxa woke at Loki's whispered urgings to her bedfellow and shooed them both out efficiently, Thor still dressed in only the necklace that Mjölnir hung from. Uncharacteristically, Loki did not pursue the comedic nature of the situation but dressed the Thunder Master before dragging him out into the courtyard where Thjalfi had managed to ready their horses. The sharp dawn air cleared the heads of both drunkards and they remembered they should want to get out of this place as quickly as Loki did. Utgard loomed over them like a monstrous seashell until they reached the Border Rock when the strange keep became invisible. They sat down for a silent lunch. Loki spied two gaping craters to the South and pointed them out to Thor who cheered slightly.

Loki had originally planned for them to go through Midgard on the way back, just because spring was a good time for it and because it would give the little rabbit a chance to shake off his homesickness, but he now yearned to get to the edge of Jarnvid and within the scope of Bifröst as fast as their animals could carry them. Faster. He needed to speak to the Alfödr, give him a full account of what he had seen in the Outlands. But something caught in his throat as he thought of speaking to Odin, like a rebellious little fishbone. It was about hunger.

He remembered the belly-wrenching, blinding, beastly lust he felt at the idea he could do the things that Utgarda had shown him. If he knew the Alfödr at all that same lust would drive Odin's breathing up into his throat just as it had Loki's. What if Odin decided to go get the Elder Magic from Utgarda? What council would Loki offer him then? Don't? And would Odin listen?

When Loki had accused him of liking to surround himself with powerful objects he was not being unfair. Unlike Loki, Odin collected. He took oddities just because they were odd, assembled ancient and sometimes malicious mysteries just because he may someday have use of them. Perhaps being not hungry was a lesson Odin had not yet learned. Beneath that calm exterior, Loki knew a ravenous heart was beating inside Grimnir; a vast greed under the phantom fetters of self-control.

For all his outbursts of childish spite or moody anger, Loki had managed to say no to this honey-trap. The change Utgarda had seen in him he now noticed in himself and wondered where it had come from.

Perhaps it came from years of being content, in Asgard, with little to truly wet his appetite. Having said that, one trip to the Outlands was enough for Utgarda to have him salivating. Loki had to laugh at himself. Phantom fetters, indeed!

But speaking more truthfully, it was because, unlike Odin, he had learned in a singularly visceral way that there were unprecedented prices to pay for unabashedly chasing after things which were in their nature predatory. It had been known, assembled elders whispered it around the fire, that sometimes those who grew too powerful in the Elder Arts could infect their offspring with them, more often than not with disastrous results. The Father's seed could become poisoned with the charms of the Script, or the Mother's womb, gestate the infant in a chamber of condensed Enchantment, thereby creating monsters. When there was any doubt whether a man was truly powerful with the Old Magic, one need only look at his children.

Climbing down from the giant boulder and then driving their horses in a punishing rhythm along the thankfully dry steppe, Loki's scowl deepened. Upon his heart, he had never once considered his children disastrous, but he had to admit that they were in possession of a power entirely their own, a magic which was sometimes incomprehensible, and it was certainly all the fault of their parents' ignorance and impudence.

Fenrir, Jörmungand and Hel. He had injured them even before their births and then continued to do so afterwards.

Utgarda had said that Thor never dared ask about Loki's children. Very few did. Although, to be fair to Thor, Loki suspected that while all others did not ask out of fear, Thor alone did not ask because he did not want to open wounds.

The Thunder Bearer had no children of his own, so Loki did not expect him to understand the complete, devastating sacrifice Loki had made when he'd agreed to bind his own blood out of existence; for that is where they were kept. His angry son, Fenrir, the Wolf, bound with Gleipnir to Gjöll, the rock out of which the river sprang, deep inside the mountains. His mad son, Jörmungand, the World Serpent, thrown into the world of men to patrol its borders, deep beneath the waves. And Hel, his Hel, who was innocent of anger, madness or hate, but in whose company the living could not stay that way. For her prison, he had begged of Odin an entire realm.

Knowing that this was indeed the best they could do for their children was what finally chased Angrboda away into death, and the reason he had made a deal with Thjazi for Idunn and her apples.

And so, his misfortunes were all one long chain of his own making, and Thor never asked about them because he was too kind to tug on that chain, not daring to drive the hook at the end of it deeper into his friend's flesh.

"Heimdall," Loki whispered when, late afternoon of the second day, they reached the outskirts of Jarnvid. Bifröst touched down in front of them as light as mist and within hours, they were once again in Asgard.

"Is the Alfödr here?" Loki asked Heimdall on their return.

"No," Heimdall answered simply.

"Where is he, Toll-taker?" Loki snapped at him before he could help himself. There was no use in trying to hurry Heimdall. No point to try to insult, bribe, threaten or seduce him either. Predictably, Heimdall just looked on at Loki in silence until Thor spoke up.

"I would speak to my father also, Bridge Master. Where can he be found?"

Heimdall relented, but only after a long moment. "He had travelled to Midgard on an errand, I do not know when he plans to return."

"Thank you," said Thor and the three travellers, Thjalfi barely awake in his saddle, rode up into the centre of Asgard. Thor and Thjalfi broke off to make their way towards Bilskirnir. Loki pushed on to the mountains. He unburdened the horse, taking off the reigns and blankets, and set off up the steps to his house, letting the animal find its own food and shelter in the hills above the city. It would come when he called it, anyway.

Loki stood in front of his house for a long time. Sigyn had already gone to sleep, for the place was dark and ghostly. He was loathe to enter it, pollute it with his multitude of swarming thoughts. Loki went around to his workshop and found a piece of animal skin somewhere in a corner. He cut into his finger and quickly scribbled words with the blood. The message was brief and read, "Not Utgarda. He claims to know who but would not say."

Loki turned the sharpened piece of reed towards himself again but found his finger was no longer bleeding. And thus it was decided: he would not tell the Alfödr about Utgarda's magic, not in this first, basic message. Loki went outside and spoke a command in the most ancient of languages, the one that was only spoken by those who have mastered the Old Script. He put his hand up, folded animal skin held aloft, and waited a few moments before a dark shape swooped from the sky, tugging the leather from his fingers with only a velvety caress. A moment later, one of Odin's ravens, Hugin or Munnin, he could never tell which, was perched on a branch of pine, swallowing the skin up, bloody message and all. A coarse method but effective. The Alfödr would know of Loki's safe return and the success of his mission.

Suddenly immensely tired, Loki sucked on his finger, returning into his workshop. The last bit of his spring-metal was a messy granule the size of a large eyeball, refreshing the room. Loki picked it up, a new idea entering his mind. He walked over to the still slightly warm furnace, stoked it, and threw the ladle with the piece inside. It would not be good enough for anything complicated, but a small charm, a pendant, or a thin, simple bracelet to fit the slender wrist of a wolf…

In a stupor, he worked the bellows until the metal was soft but not running, and his mind so tired he could think of nothing but it's glossy, orange surface. He formed the lump into a thrice folded braid, strong but supple, with a wolf-head on either side. By the time he'd finished it was morning the next day. He collapsed into his mezzanine cot and fell into a dreamless sleep.

"I didn't know you are here," an exclamation awoke him.

Loki opened his eyes, trying to get his bearing. "What?" he grunted roughly.

"I didn't know you had already come back," Sigyn repeated, for it was her, hair braided and travel clothes on, who came into Loki's field of vision.

"Yesterday. Or… what day is it?" he squinted toward the light outside, but it gave no clues. It could have been only a few minutes since he'd gone to sleep, or a week. "Why are you here?" he asked her, aware his voice was brusque. Stupidly, he was angry at her freshness, at her concern.

"I heard the furnace change sound. I went to check who was inside."  
The furnace was indeed giving off grunts and growls, for Loki had not brought it down properly. "Who the fuck would be inside, woman?" he snapped.

"I don't know," said Sigyn calmly. "I just didn't think it was you."

"Don't come in here, you know I don't want you in here when I'm working."

"Alright," she said, standing up. "I am going to Midgard to collect the Southern herbs," she announced suddenly

"The fuck you are?" Loki shouted, sitting upright. His head hurt violently.

"I told you before," Sigyn stated.

"You didn't!" he protested, knowing she in fact had. And even if she hadn't, it was late spring and the time for her to go pick through what Asgard's plentiful lands could not supply: the herbs and plants that liked coarser climate and thrived in animosity, such as could be found on the rocky borders of Southern Midgard. She did this several times each year. Loki couldn't stand the sight of her, her calm, untroubled clarity, but was loathe to part with her all the same. He wanted her here, sharing in his misery, yet he knew that she could not help. He recognized this mood in himself, the senselessness of it and his own selfish stupidity only angered him further. He got up and stomped out of his workshop, into the garden.

"I told you, Loki, before you left for Utgard," Sigyn said behind him, handing him a fresh piece of cloth when he'd splashed water over his body and head to wake up and clean himself.

"Collect herbs, wife, is that what you're off to do?" he hissed.

"What do you mean?"

"I think you can imagine what I mean. And if you can't, surely you can find some lonely goat-fucker to imagine for you," he said viciously. His mind supplied unwanted associations, and he felt a pang of entirely misplaced jealousy, convincing himself for a second that Thor had slept with his wife.

Sigyn took his abuse with patience and asked, "What happened in Utgard?"

It annoyed Loki that she would so precisely know why he was behaving the way he was. He threw his hands up and stomped back towards the workshop, flicking that clean, white cloth onto the ground just out of spite. He started rummaging his first floor, looking for the dagger he'd used to suck up Hadda's scribbles. Utgarda was right – he would need a remainder of their magic to help him find the tablets. That is, if he decided not to just outright ask Odin to give them to him. And hadn't he already decided that?

"Loki?" Sigyn asked from the doors, careful not to actually enter the workshop.

"Did you move things here?" he attacked her, picking apart one of the cabinets, then the other. A glass slipped and broke against the stone floor. "Did you move everything around in here?" he shouted.

"I did not."

"Then where is it?"

"Where is what?"  
"If you didn't move it, how the fuck would you know?" he snapped. "Just go, you're useless here anyway!" he told her and stubbornly ignored her until Sigyn went back to the house.

Loki continued to rummage, throwing things out. The search for the dagger turned into a spring cleaning, until at some point he had everything out: the heavy milling stones, the wood frame of his cot, the oak table and its benches, all the animal skins and all of his tools, everything was airing out in the yard. Sometime during this mad shuffle, Loki became aware he had brought the dagger into the house, where it probably still sat in his and Sigyn's bedroom, with his clothes and weapons. But it didn't matter. The overhaul gave him more time to not-think. He swept and washed the floors, on his knees like a maid, and thankful for the straining pain in his shoulders and thighs. He took out the last of the embers from the kilns and scrubbed them clean of soot. Finally, with a grunt, he opened the furnace itself and started chipping away years and years of more or less successful alchemy, as well as a mountain of dried, petrified coal. That done, Loki stood among his things, haphazardly heaped into the garden or hanging off trees, barely visible in the last, straining shards of daylight. He realized that nothing of his clutter disrupted Sigyn's plants but couldn't tell whether this was the result of his care or his habit. The two may have as well been the same thing.

He glanced towards the house and went in, ready to apologize to her. However, Sigyn had already packed up and left.

Still, Loki spied a small vase of wildflowers on their dining table with a dinner prepared for him. He ate gratefully. He knew Sigyn hated it when they parted in a huff. He had aimed to hurt her in this petty way and all because he lacked the conviction of thought to sit down and look over his options. But what could he tell her? That he was given a foolish hope, a strange reward, and that he could not share it with the man to whom he owed his allegiance? That he could not even bring himself to speak of it aloud for fear someone might overhear it? That this was the true reason he did not wish to speak to Odin? For what would the Alfödr think of him wanting to set his children upon the world, even stripped of power as they would be?

He received no answer to his message from the Alfödr but perhaps it was too soon. Odin may have been busy, indisposed and couldn't respond. The only thing that was sure was that he'd gotten the note, for what the raven saw, Odin saw as well; and what the raven knew, Odin knew.

It was many years since Loki had enchanted an animal to possess its sight and speed. Odin kept his two ravens bound to him and had done so ever since Loki had taught him how. He claimed he did not mind having to share his perception with two other creatures, or see through their eyes at all times, so he continued to give them unnaturally long life in exchange for their obedience. Loki didn't see the need to demand loyalty from animals in this way, seeing how most of the time their loyalty seemed to be freely given as long as one did not mistreat them. If he ever did need to borrow their sight, he did it one-off. He sometimes teased Odin that he kept the ravens so that he wouldn't have to repeat the magic that had bound them to him in the first place.

Loki spent the night in a bed too big for him, not really ever falling asleep, and then used the morning to rearrange all his possessions back into the workshop. It was now spotless, as it hadn't been in years. In the meanwhile, the bracelet had cooled, stiffened and became satisfyingly pliable. He worked in the intricate touches. It emitted a pleasant buzz, a comforting warmth, when it came in contact with skin and he left it to settle but all of this meant that there was, once more, nothing else to do but wait. When the Alfödr's response hadn't come by the following afternoon, Loki decided to overhaul the main house as well, putting everything out into the garden. He did not touch Sigyn's library and kitchen, one out of respect, the other out of caution.

Amongst his clothes, he found the dagger he'd been looking for, still in the holster and missing its pair that had killed one of Thrym's guards. Loki found himself unable to part from it. That night, with everything still out in front of the house, Loki slept in the incredibly clean workshop, dagger at his side. His domestic efforts had changed the shape of the shadows on the walls, making the mezzanine alien and uncomfortable, and so he spent another restless night.

Two more days passed before Loki exhausted all the work he could think of in and around the house. Still, there was no message and no rest. The work had succeeded in tiring his body enough to make it calm. Now he only needed to contend with his racing mind. He brought out a large chair to sit beneath the stars and smoked some more hemp. He would tell the Alfödr about Utgarda's magic, there was nothing to it. Thor too had witnessed it; there was no way to hide it even if he wanted to do so. And there was no reason to hide it, was there? What was more, he needed to put this new magic into perspective, speak about it to someone who knew its secrets, as he would have spoken about it to Angrboda. Odin knew better then to try to challenge Uncle, no matter how much he may want to, and if he asked of Loki to learn the secret, well, Loki could always outright refuse.

He had for a time now been aware that the true reason he was so anxious of Odin's message was not fear that Odin would do something rash, but that Loki himself would do it. Why couldn't he just come out and ask for the tablets? What was stopping him? He did not want to risk Odin saying no and hiding the tablets away where Loki would have trouble searching them out. In the same way, he did not want to risk telling Odin what he proposed to do for his children, lest Odin opposed it. But really, how do you tell a man that you would set his killer free? Even if his killer was your beloved son. And so it appeared better to use trickery, the way that seemed to have been bred into his blood and bones.

Loki felt terribly lonely in this moment. He looked at the pipe, silvery and beautiful, and felt that he did not deserve it. He wanted very much to believe that Odin would understand, that he would give his blessing and even offer his help. But his gut told him he wouldn't, and it pained him that at his core he still distrusted his brother. Once more, he was setting himself up to ask for forgiveness instead of permission, certain that Odin would say no to this plan the same way as he'd been sure he would have said no had Loki asked to bring his wife into Asgard and feed her the Apples of Life.

Faced with another solitary night in a vast bed, Loki put out his pipe and walked to the edge of his garden to observe Asgard. Bilskirnir was well lit, the largest hall for the loudest man in town. Thor was spending another rowdy night with his wife from the look of it, indulging her to every excess the way he always did after he'd cheated on her. Tyr seemed to have a few guests over, for his courtyard was bright with a steady silvery glow emanating from very expensive Svartalfar crystal lamps made through the trickiest of all alchemic processes: distilling light itself. Frey and Freya's halls were both dark, however, as was Njörd's. The Vanir were touring the realms as per their custom and duty every spring, accompanied by a swarm of Light Elves, shielding them from view and carrying them across all the living things. Loki had forgotten it was already that time of the year. Frey and his father would return in a matter of days, but Freya would take this opportunity to wonder aimlessly for another few weeks, not in search of, but hoping to meet, by chance, her lost Odur. This was always the time of greatest distress to her brother, who she'd expressly forbidden from following her around, but who would every year grind his knuckles to the bone from worry until she returned safely to Asgard. As if the Vanadys could be taken all that easily. Still, Loki supposed he would have felt the same if he'd had a sister, even if he wasn't sleeping with her.

His eyes fell back on the darkened outline of Njörd's hall. Signalling the master was away, the mead-hall was closed, but other places in the complex were well-lit and lively. For Njörd's wife was there, roaming.

Loki put out his arm and whistled. The stale air of the hot night was slightly refreshed when an owl landed on his forearm, giant wings flapping almost soundlessly. Loki cooed to it and set it on the back of his chair. He found a piece of parchment and scribbled, "Come" in the North tongue. Giving it to the owl to carry, he whispered his request to it, and launched it towards Njörd's hall.

The owl returned just as Loki had unbuckled the dagger from his waist and, locking it inside his workshop, exchanged it for that last bit of the brandy he'd shared with Odin. The owl carried no return message but Loki did not expect it to. He caressed its soft feathers, drinking, and smirking into the bottle. He doubted Skadi would know the true value of the dagger but there was no sense in tempting her. When it came to people who didn't learn about hunger… Skadi too was a champion of the dangerous game, or so Angrboda might have called her if she did not decide to call her something worse.

He released the owl to go hunt and settled to wait for her. He had known Skadi for a long time, her father longer still. Thjazi had stood by him and Angrboda when they'd led the Jötunn armies from the North and South up against Asgard. He had still been young then, and not as corrupted with greed as he'd become later. Loki remembered liking Thjazi's free spirit and blatant disrespect for stuffed old elders with their senseless pomp and ceremony. He had been the sort of man to cut through endless back-rubbing sessions of useless landlords by jumping up on the hall-master's table and proclaiming them all limp-dicked cowards satisfied to squabble for crumbs and ignore the fact that their lands were not their own, open to raids from all races. Of course Loki liked him immediately. Thjazi was not in fact as hot-headed as he sometimes made himself out to be. Loki knew from the very first moment that beneath the outbursts of what seemed to less acute observers to be youthful energy, there was an undercurrent of meticulous thought, and so he'd made him one of his generals. He had been further assured of Thjazi's intelligence when he'd supported Loki's position on withdrawing the armies after the talks with Odin yielded the Aesir-Jötnar pact.

And so, when it became obvious that no magic he could muster would bring back Angrboda from her ailing state, Loki grasped for straws and thought of Idunn and her particular, Asynja-magic which could not be replicated or stolen. He would need the woman herself, he would need her to feed Angrboda from her own hands, and so he turned to his once trusted general.

At this time Thjazi had already come to enjoy great power among the Jötnar. He was landlord himself, and others came from all distances to seek his council and make for themselves an alliance. Likewise, Thjazi hunted relentlessly for men and women of even more influence than himself, feasting them in his hall and then working them over with his diplomacy when they were drunk.

This was how Loki met Skadi for the first time.

Thjazi's wife was a grey little woman next to her still radiant and very virile husband, so it was difficult to see for those who hadn't known her when she was still full of life how that quiet creature could have produced such a tall, proud daughter. Skadi was very young then, but already learning at her father's knee, flirting outrageously with Thjazi's most important guests, and offering them what she had no intention of selling.

It had taken her a few evenings to realize who Loki was – Thjazi was keeping him a secret, as per Loki's wishes, before she very purposefully walked in on him going through Thjazi's library. Loki couldn't remember what exactly he'd told her to reject her advances, but he very clearly remembered her feverish face when, three nights later, he got for free what she was enticing all these other men with. He also remembered her perfect shock when he stood at the top of the stairs leading into her burned and pillaged house, and held her father's severed head in his hand as he addressed the Jötnar assembled in the courtyard, Thor standing behind him.

Theirs was a strange involvement. Loki despised her, but he enjoyed despising her. He wasn't sure what repulsed him about her so much. For a time he blamed himself, thinking he treated her with disrespect and disdain because of what her father had done. The truth was that their relationship was a mixture of lust and loathing from that very first encounter, some time before Thjazi betrayed him. It was the way she didn't learn, the way she was greedy, the way he saw in her a part of what used to be himself: proud and impertinent, and power-crazy.

It was also the fact that she came in between two women he truly loved, like a protruding nail that still caught his sleeve sometimes. Skadi was the remnant of a dark period of despair, when Angrboda was dying, and Sigyn hadn't even been born to make him alive again.

_Thank you to all the people who have posted a review or begun to follow the story. It is nice to know I am not the only lunatic. The updates have tapered off a bit lately because I had to move from Japan back to my home country of Croatia. After seven years worth of stuf (books mostly), you can imagine that was not easy. Also it turns out I am a little sick so I'll be in and out of hospital for a while to come, but on the other hand that gives me an excuse to do less working and more writing. Cheers!_

_All the dramatic episodes and characters here are copyright of traditional Scandinavian and Icelandic tales, as found in the Poetic and Prose Edda, and some other sources. However, some are reinterpreted or changed slightly to suit my dark purpose. I encourage any of you who are interested in what the original story might have been, or how it pertains to what I have written here, to either ask me directly or research online._

_Having said that, it shouldn't matter too much whether or not you are an expert on Norse mythology or not; everything gets explained eventually. I hope._

_Except in some cases in which an alternate spelling is more common, I use John Lindow's guide to Norse mythology for names of people and places._


	13. Chapter 13

**Of the New Elder Magic and Thjazi's Daughter, part 2**

Loki heard a shuffle up his steps and went into the room on the first floor that he and Sigyn used to meet guests, to the right from the entrance. He dug up two glasses and distributed the last of the brandy between them. Soon, Skadi appeared in the doorway. Beneath the dark travelling cloak, she was wearing a crimson gown, shimmering and cascading over her breasts and belly. She was likewise wearing a scowl on her pretty face.

"You summon me here like a dog," she told him, hands crossed over her chest.

"And like a dog, you answer," Loki smirked.

Skadi snorted and turned in the doorway to leave but Loki was faster. He twisted her forearm behind her back to capture her between the doorframe and his body. Skadi tilted her head slightly upwards – she was very nearly his height, her wide mouth set somewhere between defiance and expectation. That mouth may have looked out of place on Freya's or Sif's face, but Skadi's features were more decisive as if carved by a very confident sculptor. She was less like a nubile young girl and more like a noblewoman, modelled after a panther, a mountain lioness. When she laughed honestly and from the heart, that mouth seemed so very generous and welcoming but Loki could not remember the last time he had seen her laughing honestly.

He refused to kiss that mouth, rather finding her other hand and manoeuvring it into captivity against the wall as well.

"So, tell me, why did you come here?" he whispered to her, putting his lips and tongue on her neck.

"You told me to," Skadi said. He could hear the cold defiance in her voice. It was the game that they always played, when she pretended to be more aloof than she actually was.

"And why did I tell you to come?" He found the hem of her dress and pulled it up, uncomfortably contorted as he continued to press her hip against the door frame with his, all the while holding her hands behind her back.

"For this, I assume," Skadi mumbled. Loki licked her collarbone, she inclined her head as far back as she could and sighed. He tangled his fingers lightly into the hair between her legs. He knew it to be a charming reddish-brown colour, just like her cascading locks, heavy and full, which she had left down, the way he liked them.

"For what?" he said, nibbling her ear. "Tell me."

Skadi tried to arch her hips into his hand, but Loki kept her pressed against the doors, and stubbornly continued tracing only the closed, swollen slit between her legs and not the more responsive flesh beneath it. "Don't…" she protested.

"I should stop?"

"No!"

"Then tell me," he demanded.

"You are being cruel," she frowned at him, breathing hard and fixing his mouth with her half-lidded eyes as if she wanted to draw blood from them.

"So tell me how to be kinder," he breathed back, and she did, whispering her requests urgently. Loki made her say every unseemly word, every debasing phrase, until he felt her become so wet he needed to run his finger up and down her inside only two or three time before she clenched around him. She would have happily slid down to the floor to catch her breath, but Loki spun her around to face the wall and, pressing her against it roughly, entered her.

"Ah, it was me," he snickered, pushing them both upward, shoulder muscles straining, "who made a place here first. Strange, it still fits nicely."

Skadi gave a broken growl and tried to reach his face with her nails. Loki managed to catch her vengeful hands and tangle them in her auburn locks.

"Lift your leg up," he ordered and she did, left foot finding an anchoring point on the windowsill. He pulled the front of her dress apart to get at her breasts and angled himself slightly beneath her. Skadi wriggled to free herself and gain some control, but was only punished with more vicious tugging and a rougher jerk of his hips. Finally, she managed to catch his shoulder with her nails. Loki hissed and spun them both around, slamming her stomach first over the side of one of the padded benches. Her hands once more secured in a painful lock behind her back, Loki lowered his head between her shoulder blades and concentrated on feeling her contract. He held himself back, enjoying her quivers, the way her long legs were shaking violently. When he released her, she almost tipped over head first.

"Kneel," he told her. Skadi gratefully sunk to her knees. Loki gathered her ruffled and torn hair, letting it anchor his hands like mahogany-tinted rope. She opened her mouth for him and he smirked into his release. After everything he'd made her do this degradation didn't even register. He felt her swallow, and then simply walked away, leaving her kneeling there, dishelmed hair falling back around her messily when he jerked his hands free of it.

He noticed she had succeeded in tearing the collar seam of his shirt when she pulled at it, even with her hands behind her back, so he stripped. Three lines of angry red graced his shoulder where she'd scratched it. He tipped his head to lick them demurely and heard her chuckle. Loki rearranged his trousers and picked the two glasses of brandy off the table.

Skadi was lying sprawled over one of the comfortable benches, red gown still open around her breasts. He could see that she would have bruises on her chest, neck and forearms, probably a few on her thighs as well, where he'd grabbed the soft flesh. She accepted the drink he offered and sipped it, observing Loki. He sat opposite, legs up. As always, he felt an overwhelming need to see her out of his house. There was something wrong about her being in a place that Sigyn used. When they screwed in Njörd's house, or somewhere else altogether, he sometimes engaged her in conversation, occasionally even winking out that last part of her which had not gone bad after years of greed and bitterness. But not in his home. And tonight especially he could not stand the sight of her.

"I heard your furnace is on," Skadi said lightly. "Are you making something?"

"I was. It's done," Loki answered curtly.

"What was it?"

"A necklace."

"Oh? For someone I know?" Skadi asked, staring at him over her glass.

"No," he said simply. Skadi would have of course known of her, but Hel had been banished to her realm long before Skadi was even born.

"Was she pretty?" Skadi continued needling him.  
"She is," leered Loki. "Very."

"But not your wife?" she sighed. "It's only the women you take for granted that you bring no gifts to, I've noticed. I've also noticed you've never given me anything."

"So I haven't," Loki gasped, eyebrows up, as if he would immediately remedy this terrible oversight. Instead, he better arranged the pillow beneath his head.

"Perhaps you should or next time I won't be summoned so easily."

Loki snorted and drank his brandy down. The night was stuffy and humid, making their mingled sweat stick to him like molasses. He wanted to wash. He wanted to purge himself and his home of this, his most difficult mistress.

"Does your wife know, I wonder?" Skadi said dreamily, pretending to think out loud.

"About me fucking you?" Loki asked in a conversational tone. This, also, was a game they played with each other, their endless struggle for dominance.

"I expect she doesn't. Or it would be even more of a tragedy," she said in a voice to match his. She kept her hazel-coloured eyes pointed to the ceiling but her attention was very much on Loki. "What you see in her I still don't know. Or do you like women who can't challenge you? Do you think complacency is loyalty?"

"I like all sorts, Skadi. Demonstrably," he told her. "Even she-wolves who hope to profit by spreading their legs for their betters."

This time Skadi was the first one to waver in their pretence of friendly chatter. "What do you mean?" she tried to ask in a flippant tone, but the clipped words betrayed her anger.

Loki ignored it. "Tell me, when you last bedded Grimnir just before he left did you notice him having an array of brass tablets?"

"Why would I tell you such a thing?" Skadi hissed.

"Did he or did he not?" Loki asked more firmly. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Skadi's body stiffen. She also was well versed in the nuances of his voice.

"You insult me and think to question me," she scoffed, but apparently did not dare to defy him beyond that comment for she said in deliberately clear voice, "I did not sleep with the Alfödr before he left."

"Hm," said Loki, relaxing deeper into the padding of his benches.

He heard Skadi get up and make rounds around the room, twisting the glass in her hands slowly. He knew she would not be able to resist and so prepared himself for the question.

"What is on the tablets?" she tried to sound casual.

"None of your business."

"You asked," Skadi commented. "Why is it none of my business?" She started fingering Sigyn's arrangements of flowers and pots on shelves, going over bound notebooks containing verses written down, or lists of plants. It drove him up the wall and she probably knew it.

Loki sat up, empty glass between his knees. "Because it is about power, the sort you would seek to use, imprudently, but couldn't hope to master."

Skadi snorted, setting down a pretty red stone that Loki remembered bringing home once for Narvi, after he'd pilfered it from some Dwarves. He still had no idea what it did, if anything.

"I would use power imprudently. What of you? Are you prudent?" she faced him, hands on hips. "When you sheared off the Hammer Wielder's wife's hair, was that prudent? Or when you let yourself be taken hostage by the Dwarf brothers?"

"Or when I trusted a false man?" Loki said softly, but Skadi did not understand his meaning. "No, I am not always prudent. But I don't play with forces I cannot hope to control. Enough of this."

He got up and, collecting her empty glass, started for the kitchen. Was he imprudent? Oh, yes, of course he was. But only ever with his life, never with the Old Script. As he had proven to Utgarda.

Skadi, who did not, could not understand that tremendous, lethal difference, followed after him, finally arranging her gown into a semblance of order, and combing her hair over one shoulder with her fingers. She sank against the far wall and watched Loki wash the glasses and his torso, surrounded by herbs and oils.

"What if I found the tablets for you?" she said, looking at the fine ends of her hair.

"What of it?" Loki asked without turning.

"Loki, I am tired of being toyed with," she said, voice clear and ringing. "And I am tired of being secretive, of being called here and there at your pleasure. I would leave Njörd. I would have you leave Sigyn."

Loki turned, wiping his hands, unsure of what he'd heard. He laughed, "Woman, you have gone entirely mad!"

"Why not?" Skadi approached him, her speech low and urgent. "They laugh behind your back that you scrape the floor before Grimnir and live by his words. You even let him ride the son you bore. The son you bore as a mare." She came to stand level with him, but did not dare to touch him. "Yet they do not understand the things you have done, or the power that requires. And those that do not laugh are wary and suspicious; full of contempt. We should show both of them otherwise."

Loki needed a moment to try and understand what she was implying. He could not be sure whether she was flattering him by, effectively, saying he was more powerful than the Alfödr, or whether she truly believed it. Her words rang almost of treason, but there was no way to tell. If he interpreted her undertones correctly, she was telling him that she was willing to follow wherever he was willing to lead, even if it was against Asgard.

"You want to know why I am married to Sigyn, Thjazi's daughter." Loki said after a moment, voice very low and very deliberate. "It's simple. I love her. I love everything about her and especially all the ways in which she is different from you." He watched her face. Her mouth was stretched and white around the edges, making her look like an angry reptile. "Go to your husband and learn loyalty before you use the word. A lesson your father never managed. Not even when I took his head."

They stood in silence for a while more until Loki laughed at her expression. Skadi swung to slap him, but wasn't quick enough. He caught her wrist and pushed her away towards the door roughly.

"You are a fucking snake," she said over her shoulder, picking up her cloak in the hallway.

"Takes one..." Loki told her tiredly. "Get out of my house."

Skadi flipped her hair over her shoulder and stomped out, face red and tortured. Loki laughed again as he closed the doors behind her. That he would go against Asgard with her by his side? It was almost as ridiculous as thinking he would leave Sigyn and marry her. He'd have to look over his shoulder throughout the night, fearful either his wife or his wife's lover would knife him in the back.

Cheered, Loki opened all the windows to air the rooms on the first floor out, as if to suck out some of Skadi's poison. He found Sigyn's needle and thread and sat down to mend his shirt.

Perhaps there was more to her fascination with him; more than the magic she came to barter for, over and over again, and the sex he continued to take from her. Perhaps there was a time the girl had honestly been in love with him. And if things had gone differently, perhaps they could have been friends, lovers, the way he was with Freya. Maybe even husband and wife.

But Thjazi had decided that Idunn in his house was an opportunity too good to pass up. On the appointed day, when Loki had arranged to bring Angrboda to Idunn, Thjazi dispatched capable young Jötnar from Muspelheim, a band of hired pirates and highwaymen, to kill the Trickster God. Loki sent Thjazi back their weapons, with arms still attached.

In response, Thjazi assembled a small army. Oh, he must have been planning it for months, ever since Loki came to him for help. Loki would have forgiven a momentary lapse of judgment, a hot-head who saw a chance to put himself forward. But Thjazi was not a hot-head. Thjazi was, after all, meticulous. He'd promised his warring neighbours a hostage worth uniting over – and indeed Idunn was just that, for without her magic, Aesir ceased to be unaging, almost untouchable. And now the neighbours came in droves to support a revolution. By the time Loki had dispatched his would-be assassins, the problem was already too big for him to handle on his own. He doubted he would have been able to penetrate the defences of Thjazi's castle to gain access to Idunn, let alone transport himself and the Asynja safely out of it once more. So he went to the Alfödr, head down, to beg for forgiveness and assistance.

However, it was the Alfödr who sought him out first, as grey and as grooved as Loki had seen him only once before, after his trial in Mimir's Well. Odin told Loki that Thjazi held Idunn captive in his castle, and was amassing a Jötunn army that would soon be capable of overtaking Asgard. Somehow it all fell into place. With Odin making his own assumptions, Loki's involvement was written out of the official version of events. And Loki had decided that his confession could wait until Idunn was safely back in Aesir hands. It was a shamefully easy decision.

With Frey, who was unaffected, and Thor, who was at the time still quite young, as his lieutenants, and with a troop of the Glorious Dead at their command, Loki organized the assault. He needed Odin for his warping magic, and Heimdall to keep Bifröst open for Idunn and Frey to cross back, astride Sleipnir, and with this handful of men, Loki stormed Thjazi's castle.

While Thor went into the courtyard to take down anyone who made a move for the hall, and Frey already having spirited Idunn away, Loki found Thjazi in his bedchamber. Thjazi was ready to put up a fight, curved sword out. But he tried to talk to Loki first. Loki supposed he would have tried to apologize, or to bribe him; perhaps even appeal to his sense of patriotism, however misplaced. He never had a chance. Loki crossed the room before Thjazi could finish pronouncing his name, and took his old general's head off with one swing of Laevateinn. He brought the head out into the courtyard to the assembled landlords and co-conspirators, and told them in the North tongue what they risked. He told them about Ragnarök. While at first they grumbled and protested against him, the clamour died down before, one by one, the Jötnar dispersed, abandoning Thjazi's plans.

And thus it happened that the only other person who knew of the conspiracy to bring the apples to Angrboda was murdered.

The only other person, that is, apart from Utgarda, to whom Loki had initially turned for help. Utgarda had refused. That was a dark moment between the two of them. Loki did and said everything he possibly could to hurt the man, and received no less in response, and that beautiful white mead-hall became dark, cracking under the strain of its master's anger. But these things were forgotten now, or at least forgiven.

As for Skadi, it was a few years before she started a pale shadow of her father's movement, assembling a rabble of malcontents from her own generation and threatening war. Odin had called Loki to him again, and the two of them sat in Valaskjalf, drinking strong tea and smoking.

"So give her compensation," Loki shrugged.  
"She will go for bribe?" Odin asked.

"Why not?"  
"You know the family, you tell me."

Loki thought of the virgin that had tried to seduce him, then of the distraught daughter, and weighed which role suited Skadi more. Was she after vengeance, pure and all-consuming, or did she have simpler, more straight-forward motivations of someone who had not yet given up on life? "If it is high enough. Don't insult her with it."

Odin nodded, exhaling smoke. "You have an idea?"

Loki thought it over. "Marry her off."

"To one of the Aesir?" Odin said, eye wide and eyebrows up.

"It's been done before."  
"Not with a Jötunn woman."  
"Well, a gesture of ultimate consolidation, then," Loki said, one foot swinging over the edge of Odin's chair. Even then, the thought came to him that he would have to look at Skadi all the time if she came to Asgard, and that he should take it back, laugh it off and forget about it, but he could see the Alfödr already warming to the proposition.

"To whom?" Odin thought out loud.

"I don't know."

"I don't suppose you would-"

"Don't even think about it!" Loki shouted, aghast. It was perverse, it was obscene. To replace Angrboda with that creature…

Odin straightened at his friend's tone, then nodded. "I am sorry," he said. "It is too soon. It is still fresh."

Loki remembered feeling his throat with his fingers, as he often did in those days, for ever since Angrboda had died there seemed to be a hole that had opened in there, and that healed only years later, when Sigyn kissed it. "That too," he had mumbled to Odin.

"You've slept with her," Odin exclaimed suddenly.

"What?"  
"You have slept with Thjazi's daughter," the Alfödr repeated.

"I-, it's… It was some time ago. How the fuck can you always tell?"

"You never so easily dismiss a woman you haven't had already," Odin told him, sitting back in his chair victoriously.

"There are plenty of women I haven't fucked that I still wouldn't want to marry," Loki protested.  
"I am sure," Odin said. "But none, I think, that you wouldn't want to try fucking first."

"You would know," Loki told him and started to think again on the suitable husband for Skadi. "Have her choose."  
"And when she chooses Baldur?" snorted Odin. "I mean no offence, Laufeyjarson, but I don't want to give my son to a rebel's daughter who could be bought out of her vengeance and whom you've deflowered right behind her father's back."

"Oh, now, Alfödr, we were not right behind his back," Loki snickered. "Have her choose by chance. By their… feet, or something."

And thus, Skadi came into Asgard, for her compensation, and chose for her husband Njörd, in his kindness and wisdom. Not the most exciting of husbands, Loki had to admit, but Skadi seemed satisfied, and during the ensuing nuptial feast, she and Loki even made peace, of sorts. After he'd had her in the wine cellar.

Snickering, Loki shook his head. That that proposal of marriage would repeat itself in such a deviant way, he could not have foreseen.

He closed the rip on his shirt and looked around for something to cut the thread with. He found Sigyn's curved little iron scythe, no longer than the palm of a man's hand. He stared at it, warm memories flooding in. She had held it to his throat on their first meeting. Docile? Complacent? How little they all knew her.

With the shirt mended, and the room aired, Loki took a piece of graphite and several large papers with him to bed, and designed lines for the winter bracelet he'd envisioned until he fell asleep.

* * *

Valaskjalf is Odin's hall; Bilskirnir is Thor's, Fensalir, Frigg's, Breidablik, Baldur's, while Gladsheim is the great hall of merriment for all the gods. Odin's tower is Hlidskjalf.

* * *

_All the dramatic episodes and characters here are copyright of traditional Scandinavian and Icelandic tales, as found in the Poetic and Prose Edda, and some other sources. However, some are reinterpreted or changed slightly to suit my dark purpose. I encourage any of you who are interested in what the original story might have been, or how it pertains to what I have written here, to either ask me directly or research online._

_Having said that, it shouldn't matter too much whether or not you are an expert on Norse mythology or not; everything gets explained eventually. I hope._

_Except in some cases in which an alternate spelling is more common, I use John Lindow's guide to Norse mythology for names of people and places._


	14. Chapter 14

**Of Fenrir, the Wolf**

It was another seven days without message. Thor had come to pick up Loki, and they went hunting with Baldur and Bragi, descending into Midgard. A light-hearted outing in good humour, Loki told them of Thor's misadventures in Utgard, including the tale of his Jötunn eel, and they spent the whole time teasing him about her. True to themselves, the Aesir had no idea of the significance of the magic they'd witnessed; they only laughed at the trickery performed on the greatest, loudest and most pompous of them.

Loki's decisiveness to proceed with his plan became stronger by the day. That good mood he'd felt ever since reassuring himself he was different from Skadi held sway, gave him energy. And so, with Sigyn gone, the Vanir due any day, and the Alfödr still away from his keep, Loki packed the bracelet made of spring carefully into a leather bag, next to a Svartalfar crystal light, and called a horse to him. Something slow and heavy started coiling in his stomach the moment he descended his mountain. It was between excitement and stage fright, and this time stronger than ever. Every step seemed like he was pushing through some infernal muck with the rest of the swamp simultaneously pressuring him forward.

Loki went out through the gates of Asgard and into the endless open fields surrounding it. These fields would forever hold any traveller close to the gates of the city no matter how much they rode, for they led nowhere. Or more precisely, they led into the not-worlds, just as the steppes of the Outlands did. Of course, these golden fields were enchanted to stop the unsuspecting from wandering off into the strange, or, for that matter, the strange from wandering into the unsuspecting. Utgarda, on the other hand, enjoyed his shapes in the mist, keeping himself exposed to the unformed. In Loki's opinion, an open wound waiting to fester.

Loki forced the horse into a wild dash over the golden terrain, closing his eyes and spreading his hands midway through the run. The horse's hooves thundered beneath him, his thighs burned as he strained to stay mounted. The wind whipped his hair back, made his clothes snap like angry flags. Loki concentrated only on how the air slipped through his fingers, imagining it water, than sand. Time stretched while what he imagined became more real to him than what his senses had been telling him was truly there. Fooling his own body, there was a moment in which he could not remember where he was, where he was going or even who he was, and when he opened his eyes, he was in the not-worlds once more. The sky was purple and the sun a light orange-yellow, near the horizon and strangely large. The earth beneath him was black and was shifting to form all the designs he'd drawn as ideas for Sigyn's bracelet. He smiled, slowing the confused horse and petting its sweaty neck for comfort. It would be a short ride today if he managed to keep his thoughts so light and unpolluted.

Only the clouds that followed him were the shape of a giant, black wolf, and throwing stones that never hit him. This was Fenrir, present in Loki's mind like a constant judge, and his father was travelling to see him.

Loki stretched his back and visualised the entrance into the cave that hid the Wolf. He felt the whipping wind that gushed between the rocks, the low, thorny plants that came in from either side to trip up the feet of horses and scratch the faces of their riders raw. He saw the black rip in the mountain face where the steep cavern was, the sharp stones coming up from the bedrock like teeth framing it, and just like that, he was there.

As he felt his horse's hooves hit real ground, Loki warped space around the pair of them so that Heimdall would not be able to spy them. He did this out of habit; Heimdall could not look into Fenrir's cave, no matter how much he may have wanted to do so, and so whatever he told his son beneath Gjöll was private. But Loki did not want to disclose when or how often he visited him. This was, after all, none of Heimdall's business, even if the man thought on occasion to make it so. He dismounted and bid the horse stand perfectly still, protected from sight.

No one ever came here, not ever the wild beasts. Not unless they meant to come, and very few would venture into the Wolf's cave. The moss at the entrance to the cave was undisturbed for so long it had grown all around and inside it like a thick carpet. Loki went down the slippery steps, lower and lower until the cave became warm again. There was light at the end of the staircase, low and waning, illuminating a high-ceilinged hall, and Loki took out his Svartalfar crystal, casting sharper shadows on the uneven, glistening walls. Gjöll, the river, stemmed from Gjöll, the rock, both the impossible remnants of the Elder World, and the water seeping over the walls of the cave cast eerie reflections. If one looked at them long enough, one might almost believe they were memories. Loki could hear something stir in the depths of the cave and his coiling excitement made him swoon.

"Father?" said Fenrir just before Loki came into view. "I did not expect you-"

Loki did not wait for Fenrir to finish his sentence. He vaulted across the moss-covered floor and caught his son's head in his hands. He had thought of what to say and how to say it, but all the words went out of his head. He felt Fenrir's fur, his strong jaw, the fetters cutting into his flesh, and whispered, "Fenrir! I have found a way to free you."

"What?"

"No, listen," Loki shushed him, memorizing the wolf's face with his hands. "I have found a way to give you a body outside of yourself. So that you would inhabit not only this one, but another at the same time, and through your will control it."

"Another body?" asked Fenrir, confused, finally getting Loki to stop fretting and look him in the eyes.

"Yes! One that would be free to go wherever you will it to go."

"Free to…" started Fenrir cautiously. "Just go?"

"Out of this place," Loki gestured wildly. "Away from your bonds!"

Fenrir waited for the echo to die down before saying, in that uncompromising way so particular to his mother, "That is not freedom, father."

Loki hissed dismissively at Fenrir's finer points. "Freedom is not as gaudy a thing as you would imagine it! It is walking, and talking, and eating."

There was a low growl. "You would tell me that walking, talking and eating are what I miss the most?"

Loki sat back on his knees to observe his bound son. Gleipnir, as thin as a ribbon and shinning like fish scales, bit into his muscles. Fenrir claimed to have gotten used to it, but every time Loki saw the bonds, he felt himself bleed. No, he was wrong to have forgotten his words, because there was one important thing to say first, one without which they could not proceed. Loki gathered his wits.

"Fenrir…" he said carefully, "If I can do this, and I do not yet know whether I can, but if I can do this… will you promise me to indulge in no sort of revenge?"

"Start no wars?" Fenrir mocked.

"That too," nodded Loki. "If I can do this, will you promise not to even speak your name aloud?"

"To hide in another body? Like a rat?" snarled the proudest of Loki's children. Then his anger was slowly replaced by consideration. "Does Hangatyr know of this plan?"

"No," Loki admitted, looking Fenrir in the eyes. "Nobody knows."

"I see," said Fenrir, white teeth flashing between black lips, glistening with challenge. "And why is that?"

Loki sighed, smiling wistfully. "I cannot really tell you."

"You do not trust that he would approve?"

As usual, the Wolf bit straight to the bone. "I have no idea what he would do," Loki shrugged. "Fenrir, if I can do this, promise me."

"You feign indifference to what the Sigfödr would do?"

"I feign nothing, and I am far from indifferent. Promise me."

"And if I do not promise? Then you would not do it?" Fenrir tested but Loki only looked on into his clear amber-coloured eyes. They have peered through this fake light for such a long time Loki would have expected them to become clouded with that milky foil of blindness, for no matter how purely the Dwarves distilled illumination, they would only ever be able to create this moonlike glow, better than fire only because it was steady and cool. They would never recreate the sun itself. The way it warmed the back, the way it smelled on the ground, the way it shone in the hair of someone you loved.

After a while, Loki only whispered, "Firstborn, promise."

Fenrir lowered his head. "On my blood, I promise."

"Thank you," said Loki, embracing him, playing with his large, soft ears the way Fenrir would never admit he liked.

"Have you gone to your other children with this proposal yet?" Fenrir asked, uncharacteristically patient with Loki's ministrations.

"Not yet. I would try it out on you first."

"Oh, joy," he snorted.

Loki laughed. "Have faith, wolf cub. It has been suggested that I know what I'm doing."

Fenrir snipped at Loki's ankle playfully in retaliation for being called a cub even now when he would have towered over his father, almost twice Loki's height, if he'd been able to prop himself on his hind legs. Loki chuckled and arranged himself at Fenrir's side, cushioned against his ribs and rocked gently by the wolf's deep breathing.

"But this is new magic?" Fenrir asked, trying to gain his bearing. Loki and Angrboda had not taught their children the elder arts, perhaps out of belated caution, and so Fenrir's question was only words overheard around the dining table.

"Oh, it's old, very old indeed, I suspect," Loki said in a low voice. "But new to me."

Fenrir gave another cynical grunt. "I didn't think there was anything new to you and Mother."

"Plenty, little one," Loki said, arching his head to look at his son's face. "Did you think us so vain to assume we know all that there was to know?"

"Not vain. Just that knowledgeable."

"If that were so…" Loki sighed when he remembered his other, lesser gift for his son. "I have visited your mother recently. And Hel, of course. Which reminds me…"

He took out the shimmering bracelet, digging it out of his pouch with not quite as much pomp and circumstance as he'd hoped to achieve. But the bracelet spoke for itself, its gentle magic working in this mossy, forlorn place just as it had in Eljudnir.

"What is that?" asked Fenrir, and even he in all his cynicism couldn't keep the awe from his voice.

"Leftovers. I'd made a necklace for Hel, crafted from spring. This is a nugget of that alchemy," answered Loki, turning the bracelet in his hand for Fenrir's inspection. It came out rather well, he thought, the faces of the little wolves lifelike and expressive.

"You made a necklace?" said Fenrir while Loki attached the bracelet to his wrist. The playful sneer in Fenrir's deep voice was unmistakeable.

"Don't needle me. Yes, I made a necklace."

"And how did that come out?" Fenrir snickered.

"Not bad, I don't think," Loki shrugged but then added. "Of course, Ivaldi would have found fault with it. Ivaldi would have found fault with Freya's pussy."

"Is it that good then?" Fenrir laughed.

"Without a doubt, wolf cub."

"I meant the necklace, old man."

"No, you didn't," Loki leered at his son before they both settled back into each other.

"Ivaldi…" said Fenrir pensively after a while. "Tell me again how you came to be an apprentice at Ivaldi's workshop."

"Fenrir, I've told you that one at least a thousand times," Loki grunted.

"Come now, you love telling it," Fenrir said, shaking his side to rock Loki's head. "I always thought it was supposed to be the mother who tells the stories to the children."

Loki snorted. "Your mother had mastered many things to be sure. But storytelling was not one. I won't tell you about Ivaldi again, but I will tell you two new ones. And you can say it's news, not stories, so you don't have to feel like such a childish twat."

"And you don't have to feel like such a fucking woman," Fenrir retorted.

"Well, now, that's sort of the point," said Loki contentedly and began telling his greatest, most fearsome son the story of Thor's engagement, then their humiliation and trials in Utgard until the cave echoed with Fenrir's deep, booming laughter. The Wolf ached for stories, just like any lonely man, and Loki felt more confident in his plan than ever. If only Odin could see him like this: just a son sharing conversation with his father. The moss around them became animal skins, the rock face, a deep forest and Gjöll, suspended above then and leaking water, the starry skies. They may have been two hunters returning to feed their family, two traders travelling to another town to sell their produce.

Fenrir was prostrate on one side, still giggling inanely. It sounded strange coming from such a tremendously big wolf. Loki lay happily warmed by the fur on his belly, head rested on Fenrir's chest.

Fenrir said, "There is one thing I would ask you. Ivaldi-"

"Fenrir, for the love of fuck! I'm not going to tell you-"

"No, old man, let me speak," Fenrir stopped Loki's exasperated outburst. "I had always wondered… you could have gone anywhere, learned any sort of craft, but you decided to go to the Svartalfar. Why?"

Loki raised his eyebrows and thought about his reply. "Because I knew it would annoy my father no end." Fenrir chuckled. Loki considered the true answer.

"Because I meant to make the study of magic my endeavour, and their magic was, and largely remains, unknown, yet everybody swears by it. Aesir don't use magic in the sense Jötnar use it, and besides, I didn't think to go to the archenemies back in those days," he said, to which the two of them exchanged ironic snorts before Loki went on, "Vanir magic… I would stay well away from Vanir magic. And the humans didn't have anything to teach me. At least not anything I was eager to learn. So in a sense, it was a logical choice. Why ask?"

"Hm," pondered Fenrir. "I do not use magic. And if I wanted to annoy my father, I have better ways of doing it. So not exactly the reasoning I could apply."  
"To what?"

"I wondered where I should go…" Fenrir said, staring into the crystal light, his voice almost shy. "In my faux body."

"That depends on what you'd like to do with your time," Loki answered gently.

"Now, don't get me wrong, you're not coming with me and sitting on my shoulder, are we clear!" Fenrir grumbled at him.

"Very well," mumbled Loki when an idea struck him and he had to chuckle. O, yes! That would be wonderful indeed. "You can take care of yourself. But would you agree to a guide?"

"A spy," Fenrir tested him again.

"No, on the contrary," Loki sighed heavily, rubbing his face. "He's about as likely to do as I ask as you are."

"Who?" Fenrir asked.

Loki laughed to himself some more. "I'll see if I can arrange it. It will be a surprise."

"I do not share my father's flare for the unknown," Fenrir stated flatly.

"No, but you inherited your mother's no-bullshit attitude," Loki commented, rubbing Fenrir's long jaw lazily. "I would suggest you let him take you on his travels around Midgard, work your way from there."

"Very well," Fenrir agreed. Loki nodded contentedly. He had lost all sense of time in this cave but it was surely nearing sunset in the outside world. It was time he started back for Asgard and Fenrir knew it. Loki checked that the bracelet was comfortably attached to the Wolf's foot, ignoring the shimmering length of Gleipnir. Then he lowered himself and kissed his son on the forehead. Fenrir grumbled, but let him do it.

Loki whispered to him, "I will return with your freedom."  
"Such as it is," commented Fenrir.

"Never satisfied, Firstborn," Loki chuckled, ruffled Fenrir's ears and took the old, worn light crystal from its niche, replacing it with the one he'd brought with him.

"Father," he heard Fenrir say and turned at the bottom of the steps but Fenrir seemed unable to say anything more, as if he'd forgotten how to form words. Loki knew, therefore, what the words had to be.

"You are very welcome, my Fenrir," Loki said and ascended the stairs, heart light, his purpose clear.

He found the horse where he'd left it, if shivering slightly, and led it by the reigns to climb up the very rock face. Unbidden, ideas came into his mind, fantasies of a time to come, a wild procession of possible futures. He knew he would have to reign in his imagination for the trip back into Asgard, otherwise he would relive every scenario in subjectively stretched time until he finally ran out of them. And Loki had always been very imaginative. This was the peril of the non-worlds. Men have aged inside them beyond their physical bodies to the point that, once they had finally found their way back into the world, they did so only to fall dead from exhaustion. That is, if they even found the way back. Old wisdom dictated therefore that one's mind should be clear before venturing into non-worlds, and called for hours of preparation. Of course, no one heeded the warning. Instead, people made up their own ways to instantly focus their minds on a single task. Loki mounted the horse once he'd gone up a sufficiently long way. There was a stretch of grey stone in front of them, almost like a road in the rock face, and going on for a good while but cut off abruptly where the mountain ended in a cliff. Perfect really.

Loki invaded the horse's will and made the abstracted animal run. The acceleration was almost enough to break its muscles. The horse frothed at the mouth, its terrified mind helpless to stop the leap off the cliff. For a while, it seemed they were suspended in the air while forward momentum fought gravity, but then Loki and the horse dropped downwards, wind howling around them. If he thought about the reality for even a moment longer, it may be too late. They might crash on the jagged stones beneath, stuck in Gjöll. But Loki was practiced at this, and the ground that came to meet them was not ground after all. The horse touched down gently into some sort of mist, buried to its flanks into it. Loki extended his hand, laughing, and found it was the consistency of Fenrir's fur. He did not release the horse's will, so that the animal could not panic and wonder off into its own imaginings, having been transferred yet again into a new and unconnected landscape. The two of them passed through this field of fur and feathers for only a few moments before Loki reimagined the walls of Asgard and they were once again standing in front of the city.

The sun tiptoed on the other side of the mountains now, glowing orange and caressing their snowy tips. Loki could tell it had been the warmest day yet as spring gave way to summer, and was glad he'd spent it away from his empty house where he might have gone restless with the heat and humidity.

Beyond the high, white walls, he could only see the tip of Hlidskjalf and could see its gallery was closed. Odin was not back yet. Whether Frey and Njörd were, Loki could not tell but there was something in the sounds of the city to suggest a bustle, like a beehive, so perhaps the Vanir have returned. Loki rode in, and through to the very centre of the city, even though he was not usually want to. On one of the wide streets running between mead halls he saw Hnossa, Freya's only child, walking around dreamily with charming trickles of hair falling out to tease her neck. She seemed to be entirely involved in tracing the geometry of the paving slabs and only noticed him when he steered the horse by her and tapped her on the head playfully.

"Oh, hello," she smiled.

"Is your uncle back, little Hnossa?" Loki asked her, dismounting.

"Yes, just this morning," she said and looked in the direction she had wondered from, in which lay Frey's hall. "He is strange."

"Strange, Hnossa?" Loki inquired unsure whether this was a general statement about her mother's brother or a comment on Frey's current mood.

"Hm," she nodded, eyes distant, then looked at him and said, "You smell of cold, Loki Skywalker."

"Do I?"

Hnossa bent over and stuck her nose into Loki's clothes. He laughed while she sniffed.

"Oh," said Hnossa. "You've been to see your son, haven't you?"  
Loki stiffened. "Why do you say that?" he said with a titillating chuckle.  
"Moss, and mist, and wolf," she listed the smells. "I guessed. How was he?"

"He was well," he told her. Hnossa was born long after the binding of Fenrir. She must have heard only the standard stories of the ravenous, vengeful Wolf, and these must have been somewhat alien and meaningless to her for she only nodded at Loki's response, as if the topic was nothing taboo.

"I am glad," she said and waved her goodbyes. Loki watched her stroll away, confused and a bit alarmed. Freya's daughter was, of course, pretty. She could not but be pretty, but there was none of her mother's sensuality about her. Even her innocence was only ever innocent, and not a coy invitation to defile her. She was contemplative rather than witty, and while she seemed to enjoy observing the people around her, she was little tempted to engage them beyond that. It was not shyness, but a meticulous academism that lurked behind her large, blue eyes. Loki sometimes caught himself thinking about her in almost the same way he thought about Hel. Hnossa inspired respect and protectiveness, and in turn she bestowed upon him her timid calm and careful affection. Still he never forgot that Hnossa was the beloved of Heimdall, the only person for whom he seemed to open that iron cast mouth of his and, according to legend at least, smile. It felt right that the man who could not be bribed would fall for the woman who did not know how to seduce.

After all of his caution, she may have been right now on her way to tell the Toll Taker all about the visit Loki had tried to conceal from him. Yet Loki's good mood did not dwindle. He crossed the city on foot, taking some food along the way to sate his empty stomach and stop it from rumbling. At the foot of his mountain he again let the horse leave and ascended the stairs. The sun was still beating down on this side, making the shadows long and sharp, warming Loki's neck. He came up all the way to the garden and only then noticed a figure standing there, obviously having just made the climb themselves. Sigyn massaged her neck, outlined by the sunset, her parcels and other luggage on the lawn around her as she contemplated her herbs. Quietly, Loki set down his armful of bread, apples, butter, cheese and bacon on the head of one of his petrified Dwarves. There was a good chance the ants would get at it all there. Sigyn would scold him for it. But only later.

Loki snuck up to his wife with all the stealth of a big cat and wrestled her onto soft, warm grass. She almost elbowed him in the head before realizing who he was.

"Y-," she exclaimed but Loki kissed her. Her skin was bronzed and tender from its exposure to the sun, flaking, rough to the touch. Her hair was stuck in salt-hardened tresses where it was long, and curled tightly, messily, from the sea water where it was shorter. She smelled of sweat, stone and salt, and her palms were calloused, nails broken from climbing the Southern rocks. She was as completely perfect as she had ever been.

They made love in the garden, right on the edge of it, and afterwards sat in the grass, naked, sharing the meal Loki had brought. They laughed like children. They threw pieces of food for the other to catch with their mouths, or lined them up on their bodies to lap up. Loki teased Sigyn for the tan lines crisscrossing her back. She pointed out the line of his pants had had the same effect which somehow led him to moon the city beneath them like a drunken idiot while Sigyn guffawed in the grass. With the stars coming out to fleck the light blue sky, Sigyn warmed the water and the two of them squeezed into a hot bath, wife nested against husband.

Loki picked up the comb and started gently untangling Sigyn's wet hair, however her knots held, as stubborn as sailor's knots frustrating his efforts until they got him cursing and Sigyn laughing at his misery.

"Oh, for fuck-, where were you, woman?" he said, splashing some of their bath water into her eyes.  
Sigyn laughed, neck extended all the way back. "Down to the Sunken Mountains."

Loki grumbled. "You know I don't like it when you go that near to Muspelheim."

"I know it."

Loki sighed. Yes, she was just as stubborn as any other woman, if not a million times more. "It's not safe," he told her, as he'd told her on countless occasions, managing to eek another strand of her hair free of the knot.

"The rains were falling all over the South this year," Sigyn said as if that explained it. She meant that her precious roots, seeds, grasses and herbs were blessed with a particularly rich year and thus lost some of their potency, so she had to hunt for them further to the south, all the way to the islands that once were mountains, where fishermen-pirates, both human and Jötunn, made their secret harbours and caches, safe havens between their raids of the oceans around the worlds.

It was a place of stone, salt and sea. It was Farbauti's realm and also one of those mysterious places Loki supposed were home.

"Still," Loki insisted, "I don't want you going that far South."  
"If I hadn't been that far South, we would never have met in the first place," Sigyn stated.

"And I don't want you meeting anybody else down there," he told her nuzzling her breasts frivolously while she giggled. "Who knows what villains you'd come across! And then what would you do?"

"As I remember, husband," Sigyn said in a very flat voice. "The one villain I met there, I very nearly cut his throat."

Loki snickered, rubbing his neck. "Very nearly. I remembered it the other day."  
"Oh, I would have you remember it every day," Sigyn crooned spinning around in the tub, brush, knots and the Sunken Mountains momentarily forgotten, lost among playful embraces.

Afterwards, they lay in bed talking, animal skins thrown around the floor for the night was warm, pregnant with coming rain. While the mischievous zephyrs rustled her now dry and mostly untangled hair, Sigyn told Loki of her trip, of the people in Midgard she'd helped, studied. Loki listened, happy to have her next to him, filling him with peace as she always did. With her eyelids closing, he whispered to her, "I've been to see Fenrir."

"Was he well?" Sigyn asked, even more automatically and normally than Hnossa had done.  
"He was as always," Loki said and then purged the momentary bitterness by saying, "In good spirits."

"Did you remember to bring him a lamp?" Sigyn inquired practically.

"I did, wife," Loki told her, chuckling softly.

"You should have told me. I could have made him the tincture for the bonds, to soften the calluses."

"He was fine."

"That's what boys always say," Sigyn snorted. Loki breathed a laugh into her shoulder, giving up.

"Do you think the Alfödr would ever let him loose?" she asked softly.

Loki closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. "I think so," he said honestly. "Today I think so."

"Good. Think so tomorrow as well."  
"You like me in a good mood, wife?" he asked with a lascivious chuckle.

He could guess Sigyn rolled her eyes even with her face turned in the darkness. "That is not the point," she replied. "As you think it, the day draws nearer."  
"Does it now?" he laughed.

"Of course," Sigyn said, entirely serious and matter-of-fact. "It is the first law of cause and effect. The smallest action governs the ultimate outcome, and every action is the product of a thought. Some thought," she said, wriggling her fingers. "Any thought changes everything."

Loki contented himself to kiss Sigyn's neck, memorizing her words. Apparently, both of his wives have of late taken to teaching him about causality. Who was he to disagree with their combined womanly wisdom?

"I will think it," he told her and pressed her closer to his chest, allowing her to drift to sleep.

She understood. She understood that if he only changed one thing: Fenrir's anger, Hel's solitude, Jörmungand's madness, then everything else had to fall into place. Maybe this was the hope of a blind man in the mist, trying desperately to avoid that one drop of blood that Angrboda had spoken of, but in this stumble at least Loki was led by a sight clearer than any his eyes could provide, or the eyes of any seer. Sigyn understood because she understood how a single thought could change the world. And when all of this worked out, the Alfödr would understand as well.

_All the dramatic episodes and characters here are copyright of traditional Scandinavian and Icelandic tales, as found in the Poetic and Prose Edda, and some other sources. However, some are reinterpreted or changed slightly to suit my dark purpose. I encourage any of you who are interested in what the original story might have been, or how it pertains to what I have written here, to either ask me directly or research online._

_Having said that, it shouldn't matter too much whether or not you are an expert on Norse mythology or not; everything gets explained eventually. I hope._

_Except in some cases in which an alternate spelling is more common, I use John Lindow's guide to Norse mythology for names of people and places._


	15. Chapter 15

**Of Dreams and Memories**

The sun was baking his back mercilessly. He could feel himself perspire but Loki did not move. Transfixed may have been too strong a word but he was certainly charmed by what he was seeing. A woman, petite but long limbed, was scaling the rock face on the opposite side of the steep valley, her bare feet stabbing the crevices and protrusions expertly. A worn green dress was tied high on her bronzed thighs, kept out of way as were the two leather satchels on either of her hips. Every so often she would select a knife or small sickle to collect an herb, placing it in the appropriate satchel. She looked nothing so much as a graceful mountain fox, a canyon deer whose footing was sure and swift and who knew how to avoid loose rock. Even her hair looked more like a silvery coat, as sun-washed as the stones around her. Watching her was like stalking a mythical creature. Loki could hardly believe she was real.

He wondered whether she was local, and if local, whether she was human or Jötunn. She had the grace and self-confidence of someone who knew the terrain, and her skin was sun-stricken enough, but her hair betrayed an exotic lineage. Crouching on the rock, ridiculously keeping himself downwind, even though he hardly expected the woman would be able to smell him at several hundred paces, he fantasized about what she could be. Perhaps her family tree hid a Vanir link. It was entirely possible. Van and Vana liked to find their lovers among the other races, just like the rest of them. Even more so, if the stories were true. Loki smiled, thinking of his own Vana lover. There was something Freya-esque about this stranger; the way she belonged in nature. But Freya was much more of a woman, curvy and creamy and alien to labour. This was a girl used to work. He stole only glimpses of her face, from afar, but he already quite liked the high arc of her forehead, the somewhat childish nose, the pouting lips and the bony, ninety degree angle of her jaw. It was a functional face, not that ethereal thing Freya had. Her shoulders betrayed sinews and muscles, her back bent and stretched from the strain of the climb. She was much more of the earth than the Queen of Spring could ever be.

If he was honest, it wasn't her nose, shoulders or hair that originally lured him to keep on her trail for the past hour. He spied her in the bay, swimming. It was entirely unintentional. The approaching midday sun convinced him to start back for shade and nourishment, and as he was trudging the stone and red, dusty earth, keeping the sea to his left and the snakes away from his feet, he came upon the edge of one of the bays. Protected from the waves and wind, the water was clear, azure coloured, entirely inviting. He hadn't even noticed anyone swimming there until she broke the surface, breathing hard, a sea shell held triumphantly in her hand. Loki breathed in synch. Automatically, without thinking it, he crouched down and peered over the edge. She swam to the rocky side of the bay in three decisive strokes, exactly as a man might, and giggled at her catch. He almost giggled with her but stopped himself when the sun shot upon her bare back. He hadn't noticed she was naked until then. He settled on his elbows with an impish smile. What man would say no to those long legs, those pert breasts? Just a moment longer, and he would leave her to her own devices. Shell-hunting or whatever. The moment stretched and he found himself now, baking, sweating, out in the worst sun, and slicing between the low bush and salty stone after her. She led him away from the shore, through a pass between two cliffs and into the karst maze.

Loki waited for her to pass the clearing and disappear among the next conglomeration of rocks, white teeth growing out of the earth, before he lowered himself into the maze and quickly out the way she'd gone. He frowned. He could not see her.

Just as he thought to backtrack, Loki fell off his feet, quite unwillingly. A sharp little knee, twin to the one that had found his nerves with a precise kick to the back of his calves, burrowed between his shoulder blades. His head was pulled back roughly by the hair but most impressive was the narrow line of pressure against his throat. His mythical animal was crouching above him, silvery-blond eyebrows drawn downwards and jaw clenched. He could but stare at her with a stupid, smiling expression on his face.

"Who are you, stranger?" she asked him. Her voice was sharp but not urgent. It was a rare accomplishment to manage one without the other.

"Who are you, beautiful woman?" he asked her back.

"Seeing how you've been stalking me since the pass and don't even know who I am, I will assume you take me for prey," she said tartly.

"Yet you are very much the hunter at the moment."

She frowned even more deeply. It was wonderful. "What is your purpose?"

"Put the knife away and I'll tell you," Loki smirked at her, going for charming.

"Tell me and I'll decide where to put the knife," she answered, not at all charmed.

Loki started to laugh but stopped himself quickly, unwilling to risk cutting his own throat. The woman withdrew some pressure from the blade, apparently unwilling to risk it either.

"I had taken you for a human woman, but now I rather think you are Jötunn," Loki told her.

"And which are you?"  
"I am Loki of Asgard," he said, watching for her reaction. It was disbelief first, and not confusion. It surprised him. It surprised him further when the next expression on her pretty face was guilt, and she quickly released him. She was a head shorter than him, and slight, but wiry, alert, and demonstrably as fast as an asp. Now she tried to make herself seem even smaller, shrinking from her straight-backed imperiousness into a fantasy of feminine pliability.

"Oh, now," Loki commented, straightening up, the smile never leaving his face. "I think this may be the first time that introduction caused someone to take the knife _away _from my throat."

"I apologize. I did not know," she said.

"You apologize?" Loki let his eyebrows climb up.

"You are the Alfödr's blood brother," the woman stated. Her gaze ran momentarily to his chest where the iron tablet bearing the birch rune had fallen out from beneath his shirt.

"And who are you to know that?" Loki said, feeling a drop of caution find its way into his throat, darkening his voice.

"I am Sigyn, also of Asgard," she said simply.

"Asynja?" Loki couldn't help but exclaim.

"Yes."

"You are very far from home, Asynja!"

Sigyn frowned at his incredulousness. "It is as I chose," she said somewhat coldly and sketched a curtsy for him, turning away to the landscape.

Loki struggled with words for a while before he found the ones he was looking for. "Wait," he laughed, catching up to her but not daring to touch her. "Wait. I did not mean to offend you."

"You did not offend me," she shrugged and kept walking.

Loki also shrugged, helplessly amused, and thought of a different approach. "You are wrong, though. I didn't follow you since the pass," he said, unsure whether she was paying attention to him. "It was before that, in the bay. You were swimming naked. I followed you to see more."

Sigyn turned to look at him. It was a dirty look, and absolutely enchanting. "Seems to me you have already seen everything."

"No, clearly not everything," he mumbled to himself, thinking of her temper, her origin, her curved blade stuck now in her belt. What Sigyn thought he meant, he could not say, but she snorted and continued walking away.

"Sigyn!" Loki called after her again. "You are right, forgive me. It was… thieving of me to watch you without your knowledge."

"It was," she agreed simply, but at least she had stopped.

"I would make amends. Here, I'll strip."

He pulled the strings of his shirt apart and started to wriggle out of it before Sigyn put up her hand. "That's alright," she said, and couldn't quite keep the smile out of her voice.

"Forgive me, won't you?" he said, taking a step closer to her.

"Nothing to forgive really," she shrugged her shoulder.

"You say it so easily… Well then, show me you have forgiven me. Let me make amends and meet with me tomorrow. There is an old stone cottage on the other side of the pass, to the East. You can't miss it. Come eat with me at noon."

Sigyn stared him in the eyes, and Loki felt distinctly naked, much more so than if she had let him strip his clothes. "Perhaps," she said after a while and gave him another rather formal nod before stomping away.

Loki felt his smile spread further along his face, all the way to his ears. "May I follow you around some more?"

"No!" Sigyn shouted without turning.

"This is not the sort of place a woman should wander alone," Loki observed, hands in pockets. "All sorts of vagrants and bandits about."

"And you're one of them, Loki of Asgard!" she retorted and Loki did not disagree. Nor did he follow her a second time. Instead he fast-forwarded through the day and the next morning, endlessly deciding and un-deciding to go look for her. As noon approached, he became even more restless. Maybe she had realized it was more prudent not to expose herself to a vagrant and a bandit. Maybe the stone cottage, an ancient fishermen's cache, was more difficult to find than he'd thought. He knew it was almost invisible from the sea, tucked away between the cliffs, as was its adjacent bay, not near big enough for a longboat, but just the right size for him to hide his small lateen sailboat. Yet, from land it should have been just a matter of following the logical trail from the pass to the sea. He paced the dilapidated roof until he could see a figure coming down the stone steps, faded green dress whirled by the Eastern wind.

Loki jumped down, checked that the wine was cool, put the fish on the grill and came out of the hut in time to look smug while Sigyn approached.

"I did not think you would come," he said with a smile.

"I did not think I would come either," she answered. He couldn't tell whether it was out of a lifetime of habitual respectfulness, or because she thought he might jump her, but Sigyn managed to avoid walking into the hut in front of him. Loki pointed to one of the wood benches, rather ostentatiously covered with a thick straw mat and soft wool blanket which served as his bed on the sailboat. Sigyn sat down and looked around suspiciously.

"What is this place?"  
"It was a cache," Loki answered, dabbing the fish with a branch of rosemary he'd dunked in olive oil, but his eyes were on her. He observed her with more scrutiny now that she didn't have a knife against his throat, hoping to get rid of the adolescent thrill that had been expanding his chest the entire morning. The only thing he managed was to notice the small birthmark in the corner of her right eye, and feel an overwhelming desire to kiss it. "Fishermen came here in bad weather to wait it out or to sleep before they had to go empty the nets. Or to lay low while their pursuers passed by. Nobody's used it for ages, though."

"Ages?" she inquired.

"It was already a wreck when I was a kid. Used to come here when I was hiding from my father. He would always come looking for me by boat, and you can't see this place from the open sea." He reached over the fire and produced the wine. It was red, rich and potent, made by the local men for their own pleasure. Sigyn observed him pouring it with an odd expression on her face.

"You must have been a terrible child," she commented.

"I was. You must have been equally so."  
"Why would you say that?" she inquired, confusion ruffling her forehead.

"I cannot imagine any Aesir parents would be thrilled their daughter skirts the border of Muspelheim alone. You said you were this far away from Asgard by choice. What did you mean, I wonder."

"You won't get me drunk, I don't think," Sigyn stated calmly.

"Sorry?" Loki asked.

"I'm just saying. If you were planning to get me drunk with that bottle of wine, I don't think it will work."

Loki quirked his head. "I have another bottle."

"Maybe if it was brandy," she said but nevertheless took the glass he was offering her.

Loki laughed. "In any case, I didn't bring you here to get you drunk."

"Humph," Sigyn observed and turned the fish over for him. Loki glazed its side with rosemary and oil. "I don't think that's true."

"Why do you mistrust me so much?" he asked, trying to sound innocent.

"You mean why do I mistrust a man who would hunt a woman in secret?"

"Fair enough," Loki conceded and made a pompous gesture with his rosemary branch. "How can I prove my intentions are pure?"

"I know what your intentions are," Sigyn snorted.

"Do you? Perhaps you flatter yourself, Asynja."

"I do not think I do. No man tells a woman she is beautiful unless he proposes to prove he finds her so. And you'd already called me beautiful."

Loki felt his amusement sharpen. He leaned on his knees and tried to scrutinize her again. "And have many men told you that?"

"Enough."  
"How many have provided you with the proof?"

"None," Sigyn said with a bit of pride.

"Alright. So I do think you are beautiful, and I would like to prove it to you. Is that impure?"

"Not if you cease pretending to be interested in why I am so far away from Asgard," Sigyn shrugged and drank of her wine, looking Loki square in the eyes. He could not tell what she found there, but, returning her stare, Loki only found more places he wanted to kiss, like the fading little scar halfway between her chin and her lips.

"But I am interested," he breathed.

"Perhaps," Sigyn allowed. "I would still ask you to be truthful. I cannot abide dishonesty."

"That's a tall order for me," Loki heard himself saying, a joke not at all untrue and not at all a joke. Confused with himself, he took a swig from his cup.

"It should not be so," Sigyn said and bent over the embers to scoop the steaming fish off of the grill. The skin was crispy, coated with salt and rosemary, concealing flaking white flesh underneath.

"And you always tell the truth?" he asked her, offering wood plates for her to flip their meal onto.

"Yes."  
"How original of you." Loki dug up a disk of golden flatbread and he and Sigyn pulled it apart into halves. "You must be the only one."

"I am not," she frowned at the cynicism in his voice.

"Tell me, then, why did you come here if you think I would only take advantage of you?"

"I am not sure yet."

"Are you not?" he mocked her.

Sigyn bestowed upon him another one of her chastising glares. "There is plenty which is attractive about you. Even more that I am not decided on yet. I am here to decide."

"Hm," Loki mumbled, sincerely surprised she had answered. "At least I get the benefit of a doubt." He watched her piece the fish expertly, using the bread to pinch the meat off the bone, not at all like an Asynja lady. Her fingers were wiry and thin, nails short and stained. He wanted to lick them. "What are you not decided on yet?"

It took her a moment to answer. "The way you look at me," she said and went back to her food.

"Here, then," he said, setting his plate aside. At Sigyn's inquisitive look, he put one hand on his chest, the other on the knife on his belt. "I, Loki of Asgard, swear on my children that I will not touch you until you ask me."

"Do not take your children so lightly", she scolded him.

"I do not take them lightly," he barked a surprised laugh.

"If you did, you would not swear on them for just any old nonsense."

"What do you know of my children then, Asynja?" Loki said. There was acid in his voice, dark and corrosive. Immediately, he looked up to her face hoping she'd failed to detect it, but she had.

"That they have been bound out of existence," Sigyn said quietly.

"Because they are abominations," he finished her thought for her, the acid growing more audible even against his will.

"How can you consider them that?" she said in perfect shock.

"And they are not?" Loki said with a nasty laugh, unable to stop himself. "The Aesir consider them to be so, as do the humans and most of the Jötnar. I have no idea what the Elves consider them, if they do at all."

Sigyn stared at him for a while longer and he noticed her eyes were an incredible forest green. When she spoke, her voice was ice cold, enough to annihilate his burning acid. "Abominations are made by choice, not by birth. For example, your choice of words."

Loki sat back and stared at her. She had the plate on her knees, bread gripped between her fingers. Her back was straight, not an inkling of humility, and it seemed that every muscle underneath her skin was an uncompromising metal spring, echoing perfectly the absoluteness of her conviction.

"Hm," Loki mulled over very slowly. "It is I who cannot decide. In one moment, you are a girl. In the next, I swear you are older than me. Maybe age also comes not by birth."

"You are making fun of me."

"No," he said calmly. "I am considering you." Then he gave an ironic snort. "And I had planned to seduce you, Sigyn. Not… discuss my failures."

"Is that meant to mean your children as well?" There was the icy voice again. She was not at all a local woman, how could he have ever taken her for one? Winter suited her so much better than this dry heat.

He shook his head. "No. It is meant to mean me."

Something thawed in her posture while he was looking at her. He could see the point at which she decided he was speaking the truth. She'd guessed right. A strange fear shook him. What if she could always tell?

"Hmm, I am sorry, Sigyn," he mumbled. "I was testing you. I have become very cynical of late. I can't remember when this was exactly." Loki moved a tired hand over his face while she observed him. "The wind has changed," he commented.

Sigyn closed her eyes to feel the air. The Eastern zephyr turned to a Southern breeze, insistent and heavy. "So it has."

"There will be a storm," he told her. "You should go to your shelter if you have it."

"I should," Sigyn agree and put the plate with half her fish down. She got up and carefully shook her skirts above the fire, depositing the bread crumbs. Loki stared on while she collected her leather bag and went towards the exit.

"I am sorry to have hurt you," she said at the doorway.

"You did not hurt me. I just poked into a wound I had forgotten still bled. All by myself," he told her. She nodded but did not entirely believe him.

"Will you come tomorrow?" he asked her, suddenly gripped by panic he couldn't explain.

"If that is an invitation, I will." He had expected her to say no, but she did not even pause. The panic was gone as decisively as it had appeared.

"Good. I will wait."

His memory skipped to the starry night on the roof of that same old cottage, many weeks later and he realized, just for that split second, that he may have been dreaming. But it was a good dream, so he decided to let it flow. Surely when he and Sigyn had first made love there were no feather-filled pillows strewn over the uneven stone paving. Neither was the horizon illuminated with a purple and green light. No, he was mixing up recollections and fantasies. It didn't matter. What mattered was that she was warm against him, and they were laughing, and she fit sort of perfectly into the crook of his arm when he embraced her…

Cold. His knees were so cold. There were ants crawling up them, stinging and itching at the same time. He couldn't feel his fingers. They were stiff and bloated, as was his face. But his chest was on fire.

Sigyn had been between his arms only a moment ago. She was smaller now, and twisted wrong. Loki finally noticed she wasn't Sigyn at all but Fenrir. In his arms he was only a yearling which made no sense because he was dead.

"Ah," Loki gasped and held his breath. Breathing hurt him.

Fenrir grew slightly bigger, almost so that Loki could see him better. The ember-orange eyes, usually so bright and intelligent, were drying out in the cold wind. As he was watching, they were fading away into a place beyond death. Loki sobbed, unable to contain himself any longer. The heat inside him needed to come out and he tried to flush it with boiling tears. But it was not enough. He was so hot on the inside it felt as though he would melt. He fell forwards onto Fenrir's now fully grown head and ran his hands all over the Wolf's body. There was something wrong with his jaw. It fell open limply, it bobbed to the sides. Loki could feel the scars where Gleipnir had worn Fenrir's skin to painful, black calluses and suddenly he stopped crying. His body was no longer cold; he was all heat. He looked to the front. It was misty, snow-swept, frozen and hard. A strange thought formed. It was his land; this was his land. It was buzzing.

Bees in the winter? No, that was ridiculous. It must have been a waterfall, right behind him. Yes, water breaking on the rock. Hmm, he had used those words to someone once.

Or maybe water breaking on metal. Now he was closer. It was metallic. It fit with the surroundings somehow. But not the sound of a forge. This was too cold and too wide a space to make a successful forge. Besides, all things here were inconstant and frivolous, soon to disappear, Loki was sure of it. Nothing was paced well; nothing was brought to rhythm. Time, pressure and heat, those were the principles, and through their workings everything would happen eventually. But here the only heat was in his chest, the only pressure, behind his eyes. The only time was these tangled strings of thought.

No, not a forge, then. Getting up, he finally realized what it was.

He looked again to Fenrir at his feet. His fur was as white as the snow. It was stained with blood in an artistic, abstract way. Out of nowhere, Laevateinn was in Loki's hand, balanced, nubile. Ready.

He started to turn but then stopped in horror, breathing hard.

No! It was the fucking dream again!

Wasn't it?

Yes, the fucking dream again, always the same. Except it wasn't the same. To his right stood a new figure, draped in tattered, grey tresses of fabric. He was fairly certain it was a woman but could not see her face very clearly. It shifted in the wind just like her robes shifted. But he could tell without a doubt that she was looking at him.

"Who are you?" he growled at her to cover up his terror.

"Why don't you turn?" asked the woman.

"Who are you?" Loki shouted.

"Afraid to see, Wolf's Father?" the woman taunted. Her laugh was as metallic as the battle behind them.

"Völva," Loki whispered. "You are völva."

"Very good," she applauded. "And what are you?"

"Waking the fuck up from this dream."

"Good day, then, Wolf's Father."

Loki jerked upwards and tangled into something scathingly warm. "Arh!" he cried. He was still cold. Why was he still cold? The heated tentacles tried to push him down; he shook them off and then finally started to see and hear.

"Loki! Loki!" It was Sigyn, kneeling in their bed. "What's wrong?"

Breathing hard, Loki kicked off the covers and stared at Sigyn's arms. They were the hot things that had tried to hold him. "What are you doing, woman?" he shouted.

"You woke me up, you were so cold," Sigyn said, nodding towards his body.

Loki looked down and noticed the markings were there, as before, fuelled to an icy glow by his uncontrollable rage. He exhaled, starving his racing heart until it and the markings desisted.

"How long have you been awake?" he asked Sigyn, rather brusquely. He didn't want to be brusque, but the anger fed his words.

"A few seconds."

"Did I say anything?"  
"No. Are you alright?"

"Yes, stop pestering me," he hissed. "Go back to sleep."  
"It's morning already."  
"Well then, let me sleep."

Sigyn gave him the testing look, the one he knew from their very first meeting would always know when he was lying. "I'll make you tea to calm down."  
"Fuck, woman, I don't need your drugs," he snapped and turned not to look at her, burrowing himself beneath the covers like a spiteful child.

Sigyn threw her hands into the air. "I'll make tea to calm me down," she mumbled and went out of the bedroom, leaving Loki to his thoughts.

His breathing was slowing, his body was warming up, and the eldritch fury was ebbing away like water vaporizing on hot metal. What it left him with was a blade of fear through his gut. Völva.

Was she a dream walker or a dream?

He had heard from Odin that those men and women of the human race who had mastered seid[1] claimed to be able to slide in and out of others' dreams. But humans made grand claims like that all the time, both he and the Alfödr had concluded. It was one thing to suggest oneself to the mind of a drugged believer right in front of you, as their so-called dream speakers did. Another thing altogether to pass space and time, travel the non-worlds as a bodiless wraith, and find a particular dream.

So it was a dream-figure, a fancy. One he'd never seen before.

Loki concentrated on the sound of Sigyn rummaging about the kitchen, straining to recognize each individual pot, each cupboard, each spot on the table just by their subtle ring.

Did it feel prophetic, as Angrboda had asked? He had no idea. Who was that woman? Was she to be by him at Ragnarök?

Or was it just a fucking dream. Loki wrestled the covers off and started looking for clothes. The morning was not morning at all; it was already past noon, but toned down with wonderful, musty-smelling grey clouds. The rain had fallen while they'd slept, making the ground come alive with fresh smells that had lately been dimmed and dried by the sun. Loki folded a pair of fisherman's trousers around his waist and stood near the open window breathing slowly, deeply.

This was what he was working to prevent. This was what he would trounce if he changed only one thing. This was just a drop of red in the World Sea. This was only a dream and it will never matter whether a mad human priestess would have been there or not, whether she was a prophecy or a thing imagined.

His eyes fell onto the polished oak box he had dug out of his workshop during the spring clean and which now housed the dagger with its Old Script glinting beneath the metal surface. He got into the habit of moving the box from the workshop to the house and back every other day out of nervous anticipation. Loki touched the lid but did not open it. As was the case with the tablets, the dagger made him feel uncomfortable, chilly, and he privately started blaming it for all recent outbursts of foul mood. Perhaps it was causing the bad dreams as well. He made up his mind to relocate it into the workshop.

Loki found a shirt and went downstairs to the kitchen. Sigyn was twirling a stray lock of hair around her index finger, staring pensively out into the garden, a brass kettle boiling water in front of her. The dim light made her once more seem to be that strange mix of earthly and ethereal. She was made of the rain clouds.

"Don't do that," Loki said softly. "It took me hours to comb it out."

Waking from her thoughts, Sigyn smiled and stopped torturing the strand of silver. "Tea?" she asked.

"Of course," he said, seating himself at the table. He didn't speak for a while, only looked at his wife with a contrite expression. She looked back with calm but insistent concern, saying nothing, commenting nothing she found in the scattered lines of her husband's face. This was why they thought her subservient; because none of them, Loki least of all, could comprehend her depth. None of them could even see where she ended, and with her all of her goodness, her complexity, her wisdom. Sigyn's unconditional love was strangely unconditional.

"I noticed you cleaned the house," she observed once she'd satisfied herself that Loki was back in control of his senses. "I am still in shock, you know."

"Shock? Hush, woman, I clean!" Loki protested. Sigyn's face was a picture of sarcasm. Loki relented. "I had to do something with my hands."

"Hm," said Sigyn and swung the kettle out of the fire skilfully just as it had started to bubble and squeak.

"What is it, wife? Are you thinking of things I can do with my hands?" Loki leered at her.

"Oh, you mean chop the wood to dry for winter, or build the kiln out in the forest so that we don't run out of coal? Again," asked Sigyn with a wonderfully sunny expression on her face.

"I didn't want to shock you too much," Loki mumbled, defeated. Sigyn poured the boiling water into her favourite teapot, raising the kettle up and down so that water foamed and mixed with the herbs waiting there. He could smell lemon grass and anis, and something else biting and bitter, waking him up.

Loki got up and brought over a spoon and two cups, just in time for Sigyn to pry open a pot of honey. He handed her the spoon and watched her scoop and twirl honey into the two cups. As he pushed over a chair for her to sit down while the tea blended sufficiently he remembered the way they had done this intricate domestic dance in his stone cottage, with the fish and the plates, understanding each other as perfectly without words as they were sometimes clumsy with them.

"What?" she asked.

"Hm?"  
"You are smiling."

"Nothing. I just realized you always could read my mind."

Sigyn snorted in a very brutish manner. "By no means."

"You always know when I'm lying," Loki said shaking the hateful teapot to agitate its contents. They sounded out with splashing and gurgling.

She shook her head. "Those two are not the same. Knowing that you are not alright when you wake up… painted," she shook her hand at his body helplessly. "That's completely different from knowing what caused it."

"Painted?" Loki snickered darkly.

"Painted from the inside," Sigyn corrected herself.

"Huh, a good description."

Sigyn reached over the desk and rescued her teapot from his merciless shaking. Loki set his hands onto the table top to dissuade the twitchiness. He had wanted to give her a simple, general explanation, a consolation to ease her mind. He knew she hated nothing more than when he withheld things form her. She considered it lying, when he refused to talk. But the only words that came to mind were not comforting. It was rage, it was pain, it was fear; it was death. Loki shook his head. "I'll tell you another time. It was… just a stupid nightmare."  
"Very well," she nodded and started pouring them tea. It steamed up into her face like a child running to embrace its mother. "What are your plans for today?" she inquired offhandedly.

"No idea," Loki smirked, knowing she only asked that when she wanted him to do something for her.

"I'd promised some things to some people," Sigyn went on suggestively. "Are you going into town?"  
"If you need me to."

"Good, then I need you to. I'll bring you the list."  
"List? There is a list?" Loki gasped.  
"Yes," she said innocently and her husband could do nothing but sigh.

* * *

Seid is one of the three basic types of Norse magic, along with galdr (magic of protective writings) and spa (future reading). Seid is closest to what we now call shamanism. It is almost exclusively a female art, and Odin is famously one of those rare and sometimes shunned men who had mastered it.

_Usually here I say that all the dramatic episodes and characters are inspired by traditional Scandinavian and Icelandic tales. However, in this chapter in particular I departed a bit from source material. Nothing is said of Sigyn in the myths other than her role in Loki's torture so I took a lot of liberties with her character and background. It seems unlikely to me that Loki would be married to someone without backbone, personality, skills or strength._

_In fact, if I may rant a bit (nobody reads Italics anyway), I have never really explored strong women in my previous work, so I am very happy to be able to write four very powerful women: Sigyn, Angrboda, Skadi and Freya. I was never particularly interested in the Lara Croft sort of action-woman who simply does with Indiana Jones does, but for some reason it is more impressive because she has tits. Sigyn, Angrboda, Skadi and Freya are not only independently impressive, but their power lies in different archetypes of what are essentially particularly female arenas. _

_In general, I am continually impressed with Norse societies from the time these myths were being created and their attitude toward social roles which seems to basically come down to: if you can do it well, then do it, for the good of your people and the glory of your name. Norse myths reflect how essentially unimportant sex, gender and sexuality was in comparison to a person's abilities, knowledge and effort. Thus we can have shield-maidens (not only the mythical Valkyrie but also in real life), we can have homosexual warriors who were just as respected as any other skillful man and the like. The same attitude of laissez faire, sink or swim, seems to have been true in terms of ethnicity, religion and social class. Don't get me wrong: I am politically and socially lazy, not the type to go lobbying for my own rights, let alone for those of somebody else, a member of an essentially indolent generation of junkies and degenerates. Yet I am amused by the fact that the "barbarian" Norsemen have centuries ago managed to come to the troubling conclusion that that which does not matter is not important so make yourself matter. Consider that._

_Except in some cases in which an alternate spelling is more common, I use John Lindow's guide to Norse mythology for names of people and places._


	16. Chapter 16

**Of Frey's Troubled Mind, Part One**

And so, after they'd had tea and Sigyn indulged him with a hefty breakfast, Loki changed into something more respectable and called a horse to him. In truth, Sigyn's list wasn't very long but it took him straight across Asgard. For Sigyn, who did not like riding horses, who in fact got violently ill if she did, it would have been a gruelling afternoon of running around. As it was, Loki mounted a particularly docile old mare and had her trudge around at a pace which did not strain his full stomach too much.

He started with Fensalir, rising up on the far side of the valley, modest and tasteful. Even though he thought only to drop the parcel off with the servants, he was surprised to find the hall's mistress out in its courtyard, fighting a large, drooping branch of a fig tree. Frigg's rich, ash-brown hair was sticking to the serrated edges of leaves, and when one of them caught her straight in the face, Loki could swear she hissed something quite obscene.

"Madam?" he coughed. Frigg turned to him, her annoyed expression momentarily spilling over, freezing his insides. The two of them were about age mates, and Frigg did not look any older than Loki, or Sigyn, or most of the Aesir for that matter, yet she had that particular sternness mixed with practicality that reminded him of Jötunn matrons he'd feared as a child.

However, seeing Loki was not a fig branch, Frigg's expression changed immediately into one of warm welcome. "Loki! Forgive my disarray," she said, disentangling herself from the fig. "What brings you here?"

"A parcel from Sigyn," he said, digging the thing out and dismounting.

"Thank you," Frigg said, standing down a belated onrush of servant girls with an elegant wave of the hand. Loki had a distinct impression that she was just as annoyed with their presence as he would have been had he lived in a house where little gossip mongers catered to him restlessly, but was too much of a lady to forsake appearance for comfort. "Would you like something to eat?"

Reminded of food, Loki barely contained a belch. "Kind of you, but Sigyn bribed me to do this for her with so much food I might keel over."

"The way to a man's heart," Frigg mumbled with a smile. "Please thank her for me."

"Milady," Loki bowed himself back to the demure mare but then looked to Frigg. "Is the Alfödr returning soon?"  
Frigg shrugged, a habitual little furrow appearing between her aristocratic eyebrows. "Could be today, could be at the Fimbulvetr," she said. "But I rather think it will be soon, what with Frey's return. He won't be able to resist talking politics."

Loki had a dizzying vision of Odin whispering sweet nothings into his wife's ear, all of which were coloured with distinctly political undertones. He chuckled in spite of himself. "Yes, milady. A good day."

"Good day to you too," said Frigg. Like any good hostess, she did not turn back to her stubborn fig before Loki was out of the courtyard.

As the hilly countryside around Fensalir began once again giving way to the city's bustle, Loki considered Odin's second wife.

Odin came back to Frigg in much the same way Loki always came back to Sigyn, if the Alfödr did so after longer periods, so he supposed that there was between the two a bond which could not be boiled down to duty or habit, which did not care for blood and convention. Frigg was the daughter of Fjörgin, who was Jörd, the Earth. Who her father was, Loki never dared ask, for Fjörgin herself was Odin's first wife.

At the back of his mind there was always the thought that Thor's stepmother was also his older sister. He'd never asked either man about it, and from what he'd seen of Thor's interaction with his father's spouse, it was exactly as one would expect: respectful, amiable, but not too profound. Whatever the case, the Aesir seemed to be ignoring the implications, and the Vanir... well, with their history of organized incest, they wouldn't have even seen anything strange. Nevertheless it sometimes made Loki's insides shiver with unease. He supposed it was a Jötunn sensibility at work, which called for every father to cherish their daughters even above their sons, and particularly, their purity. As much fun as Loki had seducing Jötunn maidens, whether right behind their fathers' backs or further away, he always expected to meet fierce resistance and deadly consequence if discovered. After all, there were only two ways for landowners to advance themselves: through their sons' martial prowess, or their daughters' marital ones.

The Aesir, who did not squabble over land, have always been son-obsessed, producing warriors to protect the integrity of their central government. On the other hand the leaderless Jötunn have found, through years and years of experience, that intermarrying was an overall better strategy than endlessly attacking each other simply because there seemed to be a greater chance that their daughters would be beautiful than that their sons would not turn out to be idiots. And so, to take away from your own daughter that with which she would bargain a better deal for your family seemed counterproductive to say the very least.

Loki was no landowner, not anymore, but could not escape that sense of protectiveness. Hel, his only daughter, will probably never marry. She will most certainly never bear children. Even though one could argue that he'd through her acquired all of Niflheim, she will never bring him fortune. He was not a sufficiently big fool to assume she would never take a lover. But should any of those lovers take her in secret, through deceit, or even against her will, should any of them break her tender, inner heart, he would feed her theirs in turn.

It took him another three hours to make all the rounds, sometimes stopping at modest town houses, sometimes at the major players' magnificent halls. However, it felt like months. Wherever he had the misfortune of running into the hall-master, or even worse, his wife, he had to withstand endless invitations to tea, lunch, afternoon snacks or just a sampling of baked goods. By the time he reached the bottom of Sigyn's list, he suspected she'd shouldered this duty onto him less because she didn't want to walk around the city, and more because she didn't want to keep saying no to food with that fixed, regretful smile making her face stiff.

With the sun slowly turning redder in the sky which has cleared of clouds, Loki reached the last name on the list. It took him through a large silver gate and into an ancient orange grove. He had no idea what the Vanir had to do to persuade oranges to grow in Asgard's climate, but there they were, round, vividly green blobs among aromatic, waxy leaves.

Originally the hostages in a war for dominance, Njörd and his children were all housed in a single, large complex which, while luxurious and beautiful, was still unmistakeably a cage. The orange grove was perhaps a testament to their years of dull captivity, before they became once and for all time rightful, fully fledged, integral members of Aesir society. Domesticated. Like Loki.

There was something intensely ironic about the ending of the Aesir-Vanir war. The truce was a matter of form. This was obvious from the choice of hostages that ended it. The Aesir sent into exile two elevated, but non-vital members of their aristocracy, while the Vanir had to surrender their Chieftain, his father, and his sister, the Queen. The Aesir very obviously had the upper hand in that treaty, as in the war, yet there was no talk of them taking Vanaheim by force. Or, even more impossible, the destruction of the Vanir race. It was a strange war where one side, while privy to superior military power, could not afford to actually defeat the other.

The Vanir had to be subdued, not annihilated, for their annihilation would have meant the annihilation of the world, the advent of chaos. Privately, Loki suspected that they could have played their hand against Asgard a lot better. After all, Asgard may have been unable to afford overthrowing the Vanir, but the Vanir could have certainly afforded to overthrow Asgard. For how would the Alfödr have dealt with disobedient Light Elves when he lacked the innate, inimitable magic which controlled them? He could not even see them, let alone command them.

All the Vanir needed to do after it became obvious they could not win through outright warfare was lay down the weapons and let the Aesir have exactly what they were supposedly fighting to gain. After a few months of random rain, snow and hail taking turns with vicious droughts, after several dozen human villages got swallowed up by the jealous forests around them, after enough Aesir children disappeared into the sea or the fields, the Alfödr would have had to come crawling back to his subdued opponents and beg them, prostrate on the floor, to take back their throne. And his, and any other he could give them, for there was absolutely nothing a magician could do against those very things which gave him power. Life, death, rebirth; growth, warmth, decay, mutation: this was the true Elder Magic.

The fact that the Alfödr managed to manipulate the Vanir in such a masterful way that they never thought to do this only proved that there was a reason he and not Frey governed most of the worlds.

Of course such ambitions have long since lost their appeal to time and habit. The Aesir and the Vanir were a single unit now, an efficacious alliance working in equilibrium and towards the greater good for all. Of course, they said so themselves. Still, not even the Jötnar were stupid enough to challenge Vanir rule over what they were meant to rule.

Loki broke into a paved clearing. He'd come in the wrong way around to avoid any more bustling servants so he was met by the little ponds, combed gravel paths and silver screens of Frey's backyard. While Njörd moved to and from his famous hall on the seaside, which he professed to preferring every chance he got, Freya had gone to live in her husband's house, and Frey somehow got stuck with the hall that had originally been his prison. It had been made to fit the hostages' native tastes with rooms open to the outside, a ground floor lifted off the earth with walkways circumscribing it, and wood bridges leading in and out of secret interior gardens. Since then it had made some concessions to Asgard's weather which was not subject to the hall-master's mood as it was in Vanaheim. Still, there was a distinct feel that one was stepping into something exotic and otherworldly and Loki was again reminded that the Aesir and Jötnar shared an ancestry, while the Vanir were truly separate from all.

He dismounted and let the mare wonder off, crossing his fingers she wouldn't have time to shit on Frey's lawn too much before he concluded his business. He climbed up on the wood walkway, hoping to bump into a servant soon and finish his task.

"Master Skywalker."  
But not that servant. Loki turned around to see Skirnir coming out from one of the adjacent passages. "Can I help you?"

Tall and impressive, Skirnir was so obviously dishonest that it was magnificent to behold. His sculpted features told of a Vana mother, but the sly, greedy expression betrayed a human heritage. Loki wasn't sure why Frey kept him around. Perhaps it was a case of a backstabber versus one's own personal backstabber. Whatever it was that had kept master and servant bound to each other for so many years, Skirnir had during that time proven himself just clever, vain and presumptuous enough to keep Loki on his toes, but not enough to endear himself to him.

"Skirnir," Loki said, on the brink of politeness. He swore if the man offered him anything to eat, he would have the mare sit on his face. "Where is Frey?"

He supposed he must have appeared urgent, for Skirnir only bowed, inviting Loki to follow him, and entered the complex. Through a series of corridors vaulted with writhing cast-iron beams, they passed several spacious pavilions plated with painted silk and paved with alabaster. Loki supposed the octagonal rooms oriented towards interior gardens served some mysterious hedonistic purpose for they suggested no other function. They could not be made into guest rooms, they could not protect the treasures within them, and as meeting places they were just a little bit too public for Loki's taste. Again, it was his Jötunn frugality at work, or perhaps a Dwarfish sense of functionality, but Loki could see no way to excuse this type of excess. Then again, it was not the Vanir who had built this place but the Aesir who had wanted to please them and maybe Frey thought the extra rooms just as cumbersome. Finally, they reached a more private part of the house. Skirnir opened another silver studded, beautifully carved door and, sticking his head through it, inquired, "Milord?"

There was a grunt from behind the screen and Loki skilfully jumped around Skirnir, who was no doubt planning on making him wait on ceremony a bit longer.

"Frey," he called, walking in. If the public face of Frey's house was exotic, its private one was depressingly familiar. Even among spindly objects made according to Vanir sensibilities, Loki could recognize the room of a man who was desperately looking for something to occupy himself with. Frey was sitting propped on his window sill, with weapons of all shapes, sizes and deadly persuasions, from spears, daggers and swords to longbows, maces and mallets, strewn across the floor around him like fallen leaves. There were so many of them there that Loki started suspecting they couldn't possibly all belong to Frey, yet they all bore the same seal, engraved onto hilts or holsters, that Loki remembered seeing on Frey's weapons before. The man himself seemed to have been alternating between polishing them, drawing sketches of them onto book covers, and surreptitiously sticking them into his furniture. Loki whistled. Next to him, Skirnir opened his hands in dry commentary of the scene and leaned onto one ruined cabinet.

Frey looked up from a large, curved sabre, as long as his arm and thicker. His caramel hair clashed with his unhealthy greenish complexion while bloodshot eyes hinted at a massive hangover. The room reeked of the Vana poppy drug. Had Frey been any more similar in personality to Thor, he would have been an unshaven, unwashed, disgusting mess. Since he was not, he was a well-dressed and clean-shaven mess, smelling strangely alluring. Loki looked around trying to find the turtle shell pipe among all the dangerous junk.

"Skywalker," Frey acknowledged Loki's existence in a hoarse voice.

"Sigyn's package," Loki said, finally understanding what Hnossa had meant when she'd said her uncle was strange. Rather than come any closer to the sabre, he threw his final package of the day across the room to Frey.

"Oh," groaned Frey with satisfaction. "Thank your wife for me."

"Sure."

"I mean it," Frey frowned.

"Yeah, I've been hearing it all day."

"Mm," Frey mumbled breaking open the wax paper bag to reveal several bushels of herbs. He sniffed one with the longing expression of a man who was going to get his long-overdue relief. "Skirnir, get me hot water," he ordered and Skirnir twirled on his heel to go obey, that patronising smirk still on his face.

Frey mused over the parcel a moment longer before he looked up, remembering his guest, "Oh, did you want anything to drink?"

"No, thanks," Loki said, already practiced. "I'll leave you to it." He recognized some of the herbs. They were a more potent version of what Sigyn had them drinking that morning; a remedy to pacify the nerves along with some of Sigyn's bitter ampoules to replenish the organism which Frey dearly needed if Loki had correctly judged the smell of poppy snot. He must have been smoking it day in and day out, and Loki had to admit he felt a pang of concern for the man. Every year when Freya took her time to search for her husband, Frey became bitchy and reclusive, much to the amusement of his friends, but Loki had never seen him quite this distraught.

"Mate, it happens every year," he told Frey with a helpless sigh. "She goes off, she's away for a few weeks, she comes back and all is well, right? Don't you think you're really…"

Frey gave him a wicked look and growled, "How many sisters do you have?"  
"None," Loki rolled his eyes. Frey looked very much like his fairer sibling when she'd asked Loki whether he loved his wife, if slightly more drugged. Evidently, the Vanir liked to make their point in two or more sardonic questions.

"And how many of them are constantly being chased after by every which cunt thinks to make himself king of the fucking mountain?"

"None."

"So no, I don't think I'm really!"

"Fine, fine," Loki shrugged. There was no point in trying to console the man who was determined to remain inconsolable. He gave the room another longing gaze but failing to find the pipe, bowed to the Vanir Chief with plenty of irony.

"Your Majesty," he intoned and spun around, already thinking of taking a long, warm bath before a decidedly light dinner.

"There's more to it that than," Loki heard Frey's pained croak just as he reached the door. He turned back around to see Frey staring into a spot on the floor with a complicated look on his face. He allowed a polite pause which stretched until Frey finally said, "Have a seat, won't you, Skywalker?"  
"I'm afraid I'd cut my balls off," Loki said tartly.

Frey seemed to notice his arsenal for the first time. "Oh," he mouthed, got up, sabre still in hand, and walked out of the room. Mesmerized, Loki followed almost tripping over Frey's typically Vanir robes. Unpractical, gaudy, many-layered and probably not nearly as comfortable as they could be, Loki still had to admit they made him look like a king. The sabre helped too.

* * *

Fimbulvetr: the three year winter that would come just before Ragnarök.

_All the dramatic episodes and characters here are copyright of traditional Scandinavian and Icelandic tales, as found in the Poetic and Prose Edda, and some other sources. However, some are reinterpreted or changed slightly to suit my dark purpose. I encourage any of you who are interested in what the original story might have been, or how it pertains to what I have written here, to either ask me directly or research online._

_Having said that, it shouldn't matter too much whether or not you are an expert on Norse mythology or not; everything gets explained eventually. I hope._

_Except in some cases in which an alternate spelling is more common, I use John Lindow's guide to Norse mythology for names of people and places._


	17. Chapter 17

**Of Frey's Troubled Mind, Part Two**

Frey took them to a lovely open pavilion where two cushioned chairs looked onto the western end of the orange grove. Loki realized Skirnir must have taken him the long way around through the labyrinthine house instead of simply crossing the garden. He scowled while he and the Elf King settled themselves into their seats. In the lengthening shadows of the afternoon sun, Frey looked less completely ill but not by much. His face was strangely grooved; not aged but anguished. Even his hands which gripped the sabre, twirling it against the floor, were wiry and dry. When he spoke it sounded like the coarse rambling of a hermit.

"There was a mountain in Jötunheim that hid passes, got people lost. It gave them food and drink, but kept them close for… years, lifetimes. You understand, it was just lonely," he looked up at Loki, evidently fully expecting him to comprehend the statement.

"Mm," Loki managed, distracted by the metallic ringing sound the tip of the sabre was making against the stone floor. He had heard the Vanir refer to Light Elves by their function and not their names before but it continued to catch him off guard. The mountain, the river, the gorge, the grove. Talking about a mountain as if it had a heart and mind was to Loki the same as thinking Sigyn's teapot hid a malicious agenda, or that his trousers had feelings.

But Yngvi-Frey was apparently satisfied with Loki's appeasing mumble for he went on, "Ljosalfar are like children, you know. You forget that sometimes."

"Yes," Loki faked more understanding.

"Are Dwarves like that as well?" Frey asked, quirking his head.

"Like what?"

"Not very complicated, not really. Convoluted, maybe, but essentially motivated by very simple needs."

"I think all creatures are convoluted but essentially motivated by the same needs," Loki said and earned himself a feeble "ah" from Frey. "I've never met Ljosalfar, Elf King, I really couldn't tell."

"Really?" Frey asked, sabre burrowing into the stone, off beat. "I was sure you'd have ingratiated yourself with one, or something. You get around."

"As you say," Loki smirked.

"You know what I mean," Frey shook his head, only half-apologetically.

"I know exactly. Please stop that," Loki said nodding toward the twirling sabre. Frey blinked and obeyed in a jerky sort of way, like a man tethered on the brink of politeness. His hands remained unhappily perched on the sabre handle. The two of them found themselves surrounded by a strange silence. Loki settled back into the chair and looked over the orange grove. It really was a pleasant place. If only he had more pleasant company. Suddenly, he too wished very much Freya was here.

"I've never met the Dökkalfar," Frey observed after a while. "Our two races have become separated before I became Chief. They seem very obsessed with property." He said the word as if it was something dirty.

"I suppose you could say that. I'd say they are just very protective of what is theirs," said Loki but his mind was running to a fantasy of what he could do in this pavilion with Freya, the warm sunset combining with his efforts to make her skin gloss over with a layer of sweet perspiration.

"Oh, well, Ljosalfar are like that as well. Except they lay claim to the piece of land we assigned to them," Frey said, his tired, raspy voice somehow proud. "I suppose it is being protective. They live through that land."

"Um, yes," Loki said, trying to sound sympathetic. For whatever reason, it seemed Frey wanted compassion for his grubby, infantile underlings. Then again, he too was a fiercely protective man so Loki supposed it made sense.

"The mountain wanted more life, you see? So it was tripping up travellers to keep them close. And we took it away from it," Frey concluded darkly.

Loki started to nod his head but realized he'd completely lost the thread of their disjointed conversation. "Sorry, what?"

"The elf that was responsible for the mountain," Frey explained. "We took the mountain away from it. Won't be forever, you know. Just for a few years while it learns to behave."

Loki rearranged the words in his head and, morbidly fascinated, breathed, "What happens to Ljosalfar if you take their mountains away? "

"Doesn't have to be a mountain…" mumbled Frey.

"Whatever it is. I thought they turn into trolls and all sorts of nasty things humans like to hunt."

"Well, that's if they don't behave," Frey said dismissively and looked to the wood walkway which Skirnir was navigating with surprising elegance, carrying a trey of brass paraphernalia. While Skirnir and his master fiddled with Sigyn's herbs, trying to make tea, Loki was still aghast.

There was something frightening about the way Vanir talked about the Light Elves, something which Loki only now realized. No other race could control these creatures upon whose will the very fabric of nature relied, yet the Vanir took it for granted, and took it very lightly, that they would be able to do so. Nevertheless, as the Dökkalfar's existence, Frey's recent brush with the "mountain", as well as the numerous stories of rogue Elves clearly proved, there was no reason to suppose Ljosalfar could not rise against their Vanir masters. What was truly frightening was that the Vanir did not even seem to consider that possibility. Nor were they, it would appear, appropriately horrified by its consequences.

All of his life, Loki had supposed that there was some sort of primal magic which bound one race's will to the other. He was aware this was a very Jötunn way of thinking about it. As Utgarda had said, will and life had been the same thing at the formation of the world. He had always assumed that the Elves and their masters were just an instance of life and will separated in a sort of cosmic scheme of how the world should work; that, if one believed the old stories, this was how Audhumla and Ymir had designed it. Now it occurred to him for the first time that there was absolutely no reason this should be so, no supreme mechanism. It was obvious, really.

Skirnir set a cup in front of Loki and, without looking at it, he drank. The warm, bitter tasting water cleared his head. He observed Frey popping one of Sigyn's ampoules into a small cup and blowing onto the hot surface.

"And if it does not behave?" Loki asked.

"It will not get the mountain back," shrugged Frey, sipping the tonic and making a face.  
"Yes, but how do you even keep them in check? Why do… why do they answer to you?"

Frey let a slow, deliberate smirk spread across his tired face. "Now then, Shapeshifter. I am not going to tell you the secrets of Vanir magic."  
Loki made an impatient gesture. "Your magic has no secrets."

Both Frey and Skirnir looked at him in surprise.

"It is inimitable. You have to be able to find secrets out in order for them to be secrets in the first place," he explained.

"Well, there you go."

"But they can rebel against you, demonstrably so," Loki argued, suddenly very aware of Skirnir who was pretending to tidy up the tea set.  
Frey sighed, oblivious to his servant, and answered, "We do not lay claim to their power, only to the nature which they protect. To put it into a perspective you will understand, we are the… the landowners. They live and exist in the mountains, the meadows, the rivers, through our grace. If we so chose, we could have the land reject them," Frey slurped more of his unpleasant drink. "Purposelessness is a disease to them. Like idle children left to themselves, sometimes freedom kills them. Or drives them insane."

"And the mountain spirit you've chased away…" Loki started the sentence while cradling his cup.

"May become one of those things humans hunt. Or may live out its sentence in peace and merit another chance," Frey concluded. "It may once more become the mountain."

"Hm," said Loki, drinking more of the bitter liquid. "I have decided Ljosalfar are nothing like the Dwarves."

Frey gave a short snort and remained silent for a while, drinking the tonic. It was obviously doing him good for he was regaining some colour in his face and some brightness in his eyes. "Skirnir, get that horse out of my oranges," he commanded suddenly. Confused, Loki looked over his shoulder to see his mare nibbling on Frey's orchard and felt an unapologetic pang of humour.

"I should get going in any case," he told Frey once Skirnir hurried away with the brass pots. However, Frey spoke over him, "Odur had been there."

"What?" Loki said. He'd said it out of surprise, not because he could not place Frey's comment into context for it finally became clear why Frey had wanted him to stay, why he had been even more disconsolate than usual this year.

"So she believes. The mountain had said something that had made her believe it."

"And has he?" Loki asked with a sense of urgency.

"She believes it," Frey shrugged.

"She cannot search for him, that is the enchantment," Loki said, rather redundantly for he now shared some of Frey's discomfort, although perhaps not for the same reasons. Frey was worried for his sister; for her person, sure, but also for her heart, much more tender than she would ever let on, which even now fluttered in what would probably be a false hope. Loki was worried for the Vanadys, alone in Jötunheim of all places, hunting after the man who could not be caught, like a hunger-driven fox falling prey to wolves.

"She knows. It doesn't matter," Frey said and smiled a peculiar smile, internal, sad, and very acidic. He left Loki to guess at the strange expression a bit longer before saying, "I had always wondered why he did it though."

Loki shrugged, thinking of Odur. He remembered him only as a cluster of epithets. The man was brave, proud, just; dull, foreign, single-minded; thoroughly cockled, but most importantly, besotted. All the more cruel was Freya's betrayal of his trust because she loved him as he loved her. Why had he done it? Why had he forgone his home to wonder the world forever separated from the object of his desire as she would be from hers? Oh, it was so tragically simple.

"It was the only way he could have revenge. If he'd stayed, if he'd done anything else… How long before she had him back?" Loki asked the Elf King with a half-nod. "Odur could have said no to her no more than you could."

"Why test whether she would come for him but make it impossible to search him out?" Frey insisted, his voice betraying a long frustration. "Why punish her with helplessness on top of everything else? The Aesir have a peculiarly visceral sense of cruelty."

"Do they?" Loki wondered but Frey only looked out into the orange grove where Skirnir was making cooing sounds at the mare.

"I know my sister went to you. For help," he said suddenly.

Loki nodded carefully. "She did."

"Yet you did not help her."

"I couldn't."

"Couldn't?" Frey asked pointedly.

Loki paused. "Yngvi, do you think I would want your sister harm?"

"The Jötnar also have a very visceral sense of cruelty," Frey shrugged but went on before Loki could put anything in. "How was it done?"

"The enchantment?"

"Yes."

"Well, I cannot know for sure," Loki considered the question and started answering it seriously, slowly, observing Frey's motionless face. "But it could be done with Elder Magic. It wouldn't even be too difficult. There are lines you must write, bind them to a person. And if that person carried it always with him – the enchantment, I mean, the chances it could ever be lifted are slim. It's quite elegant really," he finished in unwilling appreciation of the thought. "The man you cannot seek out carries the magic that prevents you from doing it. A knot that ties itself."

"And that's how it was done?" asked Frey who obviously didn't care much for the beauty of circularity. He was making a point again.

"That's how it _could_ be done, as far as I know."

"That's how you'd do it, you mean?" the Elf King said and Loki was reminded of that penetrating, relentless, pigheaded shrewdness which sometimes made him strongly dislike Frey.

He settled back into the chair, only then realizing he'd been perched on its edge. "Do you want to ask your question outright?" he said, his tone soft but by no means gentle.

Frey too settled back. The sabre he'd exchanged for the tea cup was leaning against the side of his knee, right next to his hand. "Did you do it for Odur?"

"No," Loki said in the clearest voice.

"Did he ask you to?"

"No," Loki answered. "When did you start having these misgivings?"

"Hah," snorted Frey, the sharp smile that had been playing around on his face becoming once again more internal than external. "Recently. When I saw you change Thor. It actually never occurred to me before that time that it could have been someone in Asgard who'd done the enchantment, and not someone outside as we'd all assumed."

"Yes, but why do you imagine I would have done it in the first place?" Loki insisted.

"You also could not say no to Freya," the Elf King returned the quip. "You wanted her. You still want her, and you always will. Elegant, then, as you say, to offer her husband such a perfect revenge."

"Then why not ask the Alfödr?" Loki asked venomously. "He's been banging your sister longer than I have. He knows the Old Script. He could have performed the enchantment just as easily."

Frey gave him an ungrateful scowl. "You are better at it."

"What? Magic?" Loki asked, stirred from his sternness by Frey's assessment.

"Deceit."

Loki laughed. "A strange mistake to make, Elf King. We both surrendered wars to him. Wasn't that because he'd proven to us he was better at it?"

"I surrendered," Frey corrected. "You didn't wait to be proven. I suppose that makes me the more heroic figure. Or you the cleverer man."

"Frey…" said Loki trying to gather his head. He did not believe Frey really suspected him, not in his times of clarity. He was crazy from the drug and desperate from the worry. Still, it hurt that he could think it at all. Then again, if Freya truly believed she was close to her husband, there was no telling what might happen. Her brother was catching at straws and spitting poison in all directions. Loki knew that mood very well.

"If she does not come back until the end of the month, I promise to help you search for her," Loki said.

Frey looked up and observed Loki's face for a long while. "The month, very well," he said finally and Loki took it to be an apology. Few people were less adept at or less accustomed to apologizing than the Vanir in general, and their chieftain in particular. Loki nodded and downed the rest of his tea.

"In the meanwhile, stop smoking that poison," he told the Elf King, getting up. Frey had gathered his wits sufficiently to remember courtesy and rose also to see his guest out. "And get rid of the arsenal. Where'd you find all those weapons anyway? Pilfered them?"

"What weapons?" Frey asked, genuinely confused.

"What wea-? The ones all over you room that you were-," Loki breathed.

"Oh! No, that's all the same weapon!" Frey said, grabbing the sabre with almost childish delight. As he did, it turned into a dagger in his hand, then a mace. When Frey brought his other hand to the mace, it became two broadswords, all branded with that seal.

"That's… very nice," Loki said, impressed but staying well back.

Frey let one of the broadswords drop. Loki jumped to the side but before the heavy thing could crash against the alabaster with all sorts of nasty consequences, it vanished. A weapon that could take any shape, and any number of shapes. Loki recalled the drawings in Frey's room and realized that he hadn't been taking the likeness of his weapons. He'd been designing them.

With that one thing, Frey could equip an army.

"Very nice," Loki said, observing what had once again become a dagger, now gracing Frey's belt. For a fraction of a second he could make out the Elder Writings shining along the entire length of the hilt and knew it to be a masterpiece of Dökkalfar craft. He shook his head slowly, a pained smile on his face. Its owner probably thought it was just a neat gimmick.

Frey waved for them to walk back to the house. The orange grove was blue-gray against the cool dusk, with all the shadows disappearing. Or taking over completely, depending on your outlook on life. Skirnir was waiting at the side with Loki's horse, holding the reigns for him. Both men observed him as he mounted with strange, pensive expressions. Had Loki been a more self-conscious man, he might have fallen off the saddle.

"Yngvi-Frey," Loki nodded. "It was… an interesting afternoon."

Frey returned the nod, somewhat contrite, somewhat amused, but before Loki could redirect the mare and finally set off for his house, Frey snatched his ankle in the stirrup and leaned forwards, suddenly very intent. Loki automatically bowed his head nearer to hear the hiss, "Swear it, Skywalker! Swear it! I am willing to be in your debt for it." There was no doubt what he meant: Loki's promise to help him find Freya.

Loki breathed in to refuse, wriggle out, but something stopped him. He inclined his head slowly to consider the deal, and told Frey, "On my children."

Frey nodded, letting go. Loki only realized how strong his grip had been when he felt pins and needles run up his leg as the blood coursed into it again. "Drink your medicine. We'll talk soon," he said and turned towards the silver gate.

He could feel the Elf King's eyes burrowing into him all the way through the orange grove. In fact, he imagined fleets of invisible Light Elves following him through the city, spying on him from every flower pot, every tree, behind every tethered dog. He had to laugh at himself. It had been a disconcerting afternoon. Disconcerting was the best way Loki could surmise it. Letting the mare wonder off, Loki climbed the steps to his house under his own power, lugging the saddle and reigns, and trying to organize his meeting with Frey in his mind. He was so consumed by thought he only heard voices coming from the kitchen when he'd come practically to the door. For a moment he thought perhaps it was Sigyn with one of her ladies in need of vervain, but the other voice was male, talking quickly and assuredly. Immobile in the dusk, Loki listened a while more, Frey, Freya, Skirnir, Odur and the rest of them going out of his head as if he'd exhaled them in a puff of smoke.

Narvi had his father's voice although others noticed it more readily than Loki did. It was because in Narvi's way of speaking, especially when excited or thinking quickly, Loki could hear only Sigyn's cadences. He followed them now, hearing mother and son complete each other's sentences. They were predictably talking about herbs, tinctures, medicine, their words a mishmash of unfamiliar terms posing as common.

No longer able to just stand there and listen, Loki whizzed into the house, bee lining straight for the kitchen in a flurry of excitement. He more or less stumbled into his son's embrace.

"Ha!" Loki breathed into a cloud of uncombed, unkempt blond hair, sun-worn and silvery like Sigyn's.

"To you too," Narvi mumbled into Loki's shoulder. He was only slightly shorter than his father, and the hands encasing Loki's back were wiry, firm and secure, by no means the arms of a boy. Loki wondered how many more years had to go by before he stopped expecting Narvi to feel soft and puerile.

"You look well," stated Loki, releasing Narvi just as he'd started to twitch with anticipation. He did not dare grab his son's head and repeat the scrutiny of every line and shade there as Sigyn was bound to have done already, so he limited himself to hungry observation. He and Narvi took their seats around the kitchen table, and Narvi continued his conversation, sparing a few fleeting footnotes for Loki, in vain, for Loki could only listen to Narvi's voice, still unconvinced he was there. Before them was a giant pot of lamb stew which Narvi was evidently obliged to finish on his own. Sigyn, just like any mother, was unable to fight off the instinct to overfeed her son. She cradled a glass of strong, clear grappa she'd apparently taken for shock. Loki reached over to steal a sip, letting Narvi ramble on as if it was nothing strange that he was back in his home, the place where those who would always welcome him dwelled.

Sigyn caught Loki's eye, face alight with a foolishly happy expression that Loki was sure he sported as well, and he finally realized why he did not feel homesick, why he couldn't answer Thjalfi's question.

The place he could always return to? That place could be anywhere, Loki concluded. For it was not a place at all, but the people.

* * *

Audhumla and Ymir are the first creatures of the first world through whose efforts that world was shaped and populated. Ymir first birthed the Jötnar, while Audhumla created the Aesir. Ymir had been killed by Odin and his brothers, Vili and Ve. His death meant the destruction of the first world and, from his corpse, the creation of the current one. It is also the origin of the feud between the Aesir and the Jötnar.

_All the dramatic episodes and characters here are copyright of traditional Scandinavian and Icelandic tales, as found in the Poetic and Prose Edda, and some other sources. However, some are reinterpreted or changed slightly to suit my dark purpose. I encourage any of you who are interested in what the original story might have been, or how it pertains to what I have written here, to either ask me directly or research online._

_Having said that, it shouldn't matter too much whether or not you are an expert on Norse mythology or not; everything gets explained eventually. I hope._

_Except in some cases in which an alternate spelling is more common, I use John Lindow's guide to Norse mythology for names of people and places._


End file.
